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Title: Keeping one cow: Being the experience of a number of practical writers, in a clear and condensed form, upon the management of a single milch cow
Author: Various
Language: English
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[Illustration: THE FAMOUS JERSEY COW “EUROTAS” (2.454).
(_Frontispiece._)]
KEEPING ONE COW.
BEING THE EXPERIENCE OF A NUMBER OF PRACTICAL WRITERS,
IN A CLEAR AND CONDENSED FORM,
UPON THE
MANAGEMENT OF A SINGLE MILCH COW.
ILLUSTRATED.
[Illustration]
NEW YORK:
751 BROADWAY.
1884.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, by the
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
Absorbents in the Stable, 14, 17, 19, 26, 55, 75, 80, 94, 99, 127
Accounts, Dr. and Cr., 11, 31, 38, 45, 111, 113, 131
Ailments, 28, 89, 115
Alfalfa Clover, 97
Cut six times, 98
Artichokes, Jerusalem, 64-77
Feeding, 69, 75
Nutritive Value of, 75, 76
Barley as an Autumn Crop, 107
Barn—See Stable
Barre System of Feeding, 105
Butter, 14
Buying Feed, 78, 93
Brewer’s Grains, 9, 109, 130
Calf, Care and Disposal of the, 12, 21, 27, 28, 57, 62, 71, 89, 119
Rations for, 21, 28
Scours in, 28
Teaching to Drink, 12, 22, 28
Clover, White and Red, compared, 104
Corn (Indian) for Fodder, 12, 17, 20, 25, 29, 31, 44, 60
Compost Heap, 19, 81
Cow, Care at Calving Time, 21, 27, 41, 50, 72, 83, 87, 114
Carding, 37, 56, 84
Drying Off, 14, 37, 87
Fat at Calving, 110, 114
General Treatment, 9, 17, 30, 37, 50, 96, 98, 119
How to Select a, 80
Kept in the North, 9
Kept in New York, 78, 99, 123
Kept in the South, 25
Kept in the Eastern States, 35, 92, 103, 110
Kept in the Town, 108, 130
Kept in Ohio, 53
Kept in Pennsylvania, 16, 64
Kept in Indiana, 119
Kept on Cape Cod, 92
Kept in California, 97
Kept in Connecticut, 110
Points of a Good, 9
Rations for, 29, 30, 37, 43
Stabled in Town, 108
Yield of Milk, 15, 42, 57, 72, 114, 132
Cow Doctors, 89
Diseases—See Ailments
Draining Land, 125
Drouth, Effects of, on Milk, 39
Dry Fodder for Winter, 87, 108
Dung Heap, the, 125
Ellsworth’s, System of Feeding, 105
Exercise, Need of, 81, 109
Fastening for the Stable, 63
Feeding, System of, 18, 27, 29, 37, 43, 83, 103
Fertilizers, Commercial, 47, 59, 117, 118
Food, Am’t Required for a Year, 10, 64
Daily, 106
Garget (Inflamed Udder), 89, 115
Grasses, Mixed, as Soiling Crops, 103
Grass Seed Mixtures, 103
Ground Feed, Bran, 37, 87
Cotton-seed Oil Cake Meal, 29, 44, 87
Corn Meal, 37, 57, 59
Ground Feed, Oats and Peas, 10
Hay, 30, 82, 100
Hay Tea, 28
Hungarian Grass, 108
Land, Area Required, 9, 11, 16, 22, 47, 64-65, 78, 82, 93, 99, 106,
117-118, 125
Land, None Absolutely Required, 130
Sloping to the South and East, 125
Leaves as Bedding, 18, 94
Litter for Bedding, 18, 55, 80
Manure, 11, 100, 125
Care of, 19, 26, 62, 74, 80, 126
Liquid, 128
Supply Increased by Soiling, 38
Milk Flavored by Turnips, 14
Weeds, 103
In the Family, 11, 14, 58, 90, 130
Milking, 13, 62, 83
Three Times a Day, 72, 102, 104
Prior to Calving, 27, 41, 115
Milk-Pail, 50
Muck, Value as an Absorbent, 80
Parturition, 50, 72, 87
Pasturing, 39, 82
Peas, Canada Field, 92
Cow, 30
Pea-Vine Hay, 30
Pearl Millet, 21, 31, 116
Pigs to Work Over Manure, 94, 127
to Consume Sour Milk, 58, 79, 90
Profits of Keeping One Cow, 11, 35, 45, 58, 90, 115, 130
Rotation, 65-66, 83, 91
Roots, Culture of, 19, 41, 98, 107
Cutting Up, 18
Storing in Pits, 12, 20, 37, 95, 108
Storing in Barrels, 95
Root Crops, Artichokes, 64, 70, 75
Carrots, 20, 43
Mangels, 12
Parsnips, 37
Sugar-Beets, 16, 19, 60
Turnips, 42, 93
Root Cellar, 128
Salting, 122
Sea-Weed as an Absorbent, 94
Shade in the Yard, 81
Soiling Crops, 21, 25, 92
Alfalfa, 97
Artichokes, 64
Cabbages, 32, 94
Canada Peas, 92
Cow Peas, 30
Golden Millet, 25, 31
Hungarian Grass, 92, 108
Minnesota Corn, 92
Mixed Grasses, 103
Oats and Peas, 92
Peas, 11
Rye, 20, 108
Stables, Plans, etc., 10, 17, 25, 48, 49, 72-73, 78-79, 94, 121,
126-127-128
Stable Requisites, 11, 63
Stable-Tie, 63
Tethering, 116, 119
Tank for Liquid Manure, 128
Udder, Inflammation of, 89, 115
Vermin, 36
Water, 10, 26, 44, 84, 103
Weeds Flavoring Milk, 103
PUBLISHERS’ ANNOUNCEMENT.
We have now, according to the last census, a population pressing close
upon fifty Millions. Every one of this vast number is individually
interested in the milk question. What is true of perhaps no other
element of food and nourishment, milk is consumed in some form by all,
old and young. It is because of this necessarily universal personal
interest in milk that the publishers offer this volume which aims to
show all how to obtain the best milk, plenty of it, and at the cheapest
rates. The book embraces the experience and advice of able, well known
writers—such, for example, as Professor Slade, of Harvard College, and
Henry E. Alvord—elicited in response to propositions presented by the
Publishers for articles upon the subject. The editorial supervision of
the work has been in the hands of Col. Mason C. Weld and Professor Manly
Miles—recognized authorities on Dairy Matters—who would have included
many other valuable and interesting papers submitted, were it not that
they would have made the volume too bulky. Mr. Orange Judd has added a
leaf from his personal experience.
The topics treated are only those legitimately connected with the
subject, yet they cover a wide field, and will prove of great interest to
all occupied in the culture of the soil, while as a handbook and guide
to those who keep one or more family cows it must be of almost daily
practical use. The prominent subjects, such as soiling, stabling, care of
manure, the tillage of the soil, the cultivation of various crops, care
of the cow and of the calf, are each treated in detail, and yet there
is so great a variety and such genuine personal experience and sincere
conviction on the part of each writer, that his or her way is the best
way—as indeed it may be, under the circumstances—that there is little or
nothing of sameness or repetition in the book, but the reader’s interest
is sustained to the last.
INTRODUCTION.
Every farmer is ordinarily supposed to keep several cows, and there is
no reason why most families in villages and very many in cities should
not possess at least one. Good milk affords the best of nourishment for
young children, and goes a long way in saving butchers’ bills, and in
the preparation of palatable nourishing food of many varieties. Two to
five families, according to age and number, can readily unite in having
one cow kept, dividing the milk and expenses, and thus always have
good, pure, rich milk at very moderate cost. The suitable refuse from
the kitchens of three or four families would very much reduce the cost
of purchased food. In rural villages, summer pasturage can be obtained
near at hand, which, with a daily feed of good meal will furnish a large
supply of rich milk at a low cost. A boy can be secured at a small price
to drive the cow to the pasture in the morning, and return her at night
to the stable. A stable or stall can always be obtained at a trifling
rent, and be kept clean. There are plenty of gardeners or farmers who
will gladly take the manure away so frequently as to prevent it being a
nuisance, or disagreeable.
We have no doubt that all residents of villages, manufacturing towns,
etc., can, by arrangements like the above, secure an abundant supply of
pure, rich, fresh, healthful milk at less than three cents per quart, and
at the same time add greatly to their home comforts, and preserve the
health if not the lives of their little ones.
In February, 1880, the publishers of this volume offered prizes for three
essays on keeping one cow, indicating at the same time their scope. Some
extracts from the explanatory remarks accompanying this offer may fitly
outline an introduction to the work.
The number of persons who possess but one cow is far larger than those
who have ten or more. No doubt many others, living outside of closely
built cities, would gladly lessen the cost of supporting their families,
and at the same time add to their comforts, and even luxuries, by keeping
a cow, did they know how to keep one. There is a general notion that
keeping a cow requires a pasture. If a pasture is not necessary, they
do not know how to get along without one. Dairymen and farmers learn
how to treat herds as a part of general farm management, or in books on
the subject. There are books on cows, but none on one cow. It is not a
question of dairy farming, but of dairy gardening. The offer was made
to elicit information to enable one to keep a single cow with the best
possible results. The main points to be considered are: the stabling
or housing of the cow; the yard room she requires, and the storage or
disposal of her manure; the least area of land that can be safely set
apart for the support of the cow, and how can that land be best managed.
It is to be assumed that the land will be made to produce all that it
will profitably yield, which will bring up the question of manure and
fertilizers, of course considering that produced by the cow herself. What
proportion of the produce of the land is to be cured for winter? How much
food must be bought, and what? How is the cow to be fed, and in every
respect how treated so as to give the best returns to her owner? What
should be done at calving time and afterwards? milking, etc. In short,
the problem is—given a good cow, how to get the best possible returns
from the least possible portion of the land through the agency of the cow.
This, we think, is satisfactorily answered, if not by any one writer,
certainly by several combined.
We place as a frontispiece the portrait of a most famous and excellent
cow—not so much for her beauty or on account of her breed, but as a model
of a dairy cow, and one which may be carried in the mind when purchasing.
[Illustration]
KEEPING ONE COW.
THE FAMILY COW AT THE NORTH.
BY MRS. G. BOURINOT, OTTAWA, CANADA.
She’s broad in her hips and long in her rump,
A straight and flat back without ever a hump,
She’s wide in her lips and calm in her eyes,
She’s fine in her shoulders and thin in her thighs,
She’s sleight in her neck and small in her tail,
She’s wide in her breast and good at the pail;
She’s fine in her bone and silky of skin,
She’s a grazier without and a butcher within.
—MILBURN.
There are several ways of providing for the wants of a cow, but in all
cases it is absolutely necessary, in order to obtain the best results,
that certain rules be followed with regard to the treatment the cow
receives. She must be fed and milked at regular times, be kept thoroughly
clean, have plenty of fresh air and water, and her food composed of those
substances that will keep her always in good condition, do away with the
milk bill, reduce the grocer’s account, and contribute greatly to the
health and comfort of the family. I have tried various things, and have
found fresh grass or fodder, provender, bran, oil-cake, mangels, and hay,
the best bill of fare for “Daisy” or “Buttercup.” Avoid brewer’s slops or
grains as you would poison, for although they increase the flow of milk,
it is thin and blue, the butter white and tasteless, and after a time the
cow’s teeth will blacken and decay. I was told the other day by a very
intelligent dairyman that after feeding his cows one season on brewer’s
grains he was obliged to sell his whole herd.
YARD, STABLE, AND RATIONS.
Mr. Geo. E. Waring, Jr., in his “Ogden Farm Papers,” says he expects
to be able to feed a cow from May fifteenth to November fifteenth from
half an acre of ground, but the average citizen had better not attempt
it, but keep his half acre to raise vegetables and fruit, buying the
food required to keep his cow. A cow can be made very profitable if kept
in the following way; First, as to the accommodation required, a yard
fifteen feet by fifteen, and a stable or cow-shed arranged as in the
following plan. _A_, manure shed; _B_, bin for dried earth; _C_, cow;
_D_, store-room; _E_, window for putting in hay; _F_, door; _G_, trap
to loft; _H_, feeding trough. Have her food provided as follows: into
a common pail put one quart of provender (“provender” is oats and peas
ground together, and can be purchased at any feed store), one-quarter
pound of oil-cake, then fill the pail nearly full of bran and pour
boiling water over the whole; stir well with a stick, and put it away
covered with an old bit of carpet until feeding time; give her that mess
twice a day. Have her dinner from June to November consist of grass or
fodder cut and brought in twice a week by some farmer or market gardener
in exchange for her manure and sour milk. In Montreal, grass and fodder
are brought to market by the “Habatants,” and sold in bundles. As to
quantity, a good big armful will be sufficient, and it is more healthful
for the cow if it is a little wilted. In the winter hay and mangels are
to be fed in place of the grass and fodder. She should also have salt
where she can take a lick when so minded, and fresh water three times
a day. The yard should be kept clean by scraping up the manure every
morning into the little shed at the end of the stable.
[Illustration: Fig. 1.—STABLE AND YARD.]
The following table shows the food required to keep one cow through the
entire year:
Hay, the best, two tons, at $10 per ton $20.00
200 pounds of Oil-cake, at $4 per 100 pounds 8.00
800 pounds of Provender, at $1 per 100 pounds 8.00
Half a ton of Bran, at $12 per ton 6.00
One ton of Mangels 5.00
-----
$47.00
Your cow will require the following “trousseau”:
One five-gallon stone churn $1.25
One and a half dozen milk pans, at $2 3.00
One milk pail and strainer .60
One butter bowl (wooden) .50
One paddle and print .20
Two wooden pails for feed .40
One card .25
-----
$6.20
Cost of a good cow 40.00
-----
Interest at 6 per cent $3.69
Any ordinary family will take from a milkman at least one quart a day. We
in Ottawa pay eight cents per quart, making per year (365 × 8,) $29.20.
It is a very poor cow that will not average five pounds of butter a week
for forty weeks, and that at twenty-five cents per pound, that is 40
(weeks) × 5 (pounds), × 25 (cents), equals 50 (dollars).
So the account stands thus:
Butter $50.00
Milk 29.20
------
$79.20
Cost of food for one year $47.00 }
Interest on cow and trousseau 3.69 } 50.69
------
Profit $28.51
LAND AND CROPS.
I have found that two acres of land is the least possible area that will
provide cow-food for the entire year, and that should be divided thus:
One acre for hay, the other for fodder and mangels. If you have no land
already seeded down, plow up your acre, sow clover and timothy, six
pounds, of each. In May, when the grass has fairly started, top-dress
it with two bushels of land plaster; if you can apply it just before a
rain it is the best time. The first year you will have all clover hay,
and it must be cut before the second blossom comes; if not cut early
enough, the stalks become tough and woody, and are wasted by the cow.
The second year, if top-dressed in the fall with the manure collected
during the summer, you will have a fine crop of timothy, and if the land
was good for anything you can cut hay from it for three years by giving
it a little manure every fall. As early as the ground will admit, sow
some peas and oats; one bushel of each will plant one-third of an acre.
Peas do well on old sod, and are the best crop to plant on new ground.
In about six weeks you can commence cutting it for fodder, and it should
give the cow two good meals a day until corn comes in. L. B. Arnold, in
“American Dairying,” says of corn: “When too thickly planted its stems
and leaves are soft and pale, its juices thin and poor. If sown thin or
in drills, so that the air and light and heat of the sun can reach it,
and not fed until nearly its full size, it is a valuable soiling plant.”
Now Mr. Waring, in “Farming for Profit,” says: “It is a common mistake
when the corn is planted in drills to put in so little seed that the
stalks grow large and strong, when they are neglected by the cattle, the
leaves only being consumed. There should be forty grains at least to the
foot of row, which will take from four to six bushels to the acre, but
the result will fully justify the outlay, as the corn standing so close
in the row will grow fine and thick.” My experience tells me that Mr.
Waring is right; any way, my cow will not eat the coarse stalks which
will grow when the corn is planted too thin.
The one-third acre reserved for mangels, must be the perfection of
richness, well drained, and manured. If the soil is deep, you can plant
them on the flat, but if the soil is shallow, plant them on ridges, the
ridges thirty inches apart (I always plant them in that way); then thin
out the plants to fifteen inches apart. Ten to twelve hundred bushels may
be grown on an acre, but the ground must be properly prepared. In storing
them, they require to be very carefully handled, as the least bruise
hastens decay, and we want to keep them fresh and good until April, when
our cow ought to give us a calf.
WEANING THE CALF.
I thought I had tried almost everything relating to the care of cows, but
when I undertook to wean a five-weeks’-old calf, I found my education
in that respect sadly neglected. I asked a farmer’s wife how I was to
manage. “Oh,” she said, “just dip your fingers in the milk, and let the
calf suck them a few times, and it will soon learn to put its nose in the
pail and drink.” It sounded simple enough, so I took my pail and started
for the barn, where that wretched animal slopped me all over with milk,
bunted me round and round the pen, until I was black and blue, sucked
the skin off my finger, and wouldn’t drink. After trying at intervals
for two days, the calf was getting thin, and so was I. In despair, I
left the pail of milk, giving that calf a few words of wholesome advice.
When I went back two hours after, the calf was standing over the empty
pail, with an expression on its face, that I translated into an inquiry,
as to why I hadn’t left that pail there before. I have weaned several
calves since then, but have never had any trouble. Leave them with the
cow three or four days, then take a little milk and hold the calf’s nose
in the pail; it must open its mouth or smother, and when once it tastes
the milk, will soon learn to drink.[1] When it is a week old, commence
feeding with oil-cake, skim-milk and molasses. Into an old two-pound
peach can, I put one tablespoonful of oil-cake and one of molasses, fill
up the can with boiling water, and set it on the stove until thoroughly
cooked. That quantity will be its allowance for one day, mixed with
skim-milk. The next week, give it that quantity at each meal, and the
next week, twice that. The calf will then be four weeks old, and the
butcher ought to give you a price for it that will pay for all trouble
and the family milk bill while the cow was dry. It does not pay to raise
calves where you only keep one cow. (Mr. Cochrane, the owner of the
celebrated cow “Duchess of Airdrie,” told me the other morning that last
year he sold a calf of her’s to an English gentleman for four thousand
guineas (twenty thousand dollars). I think it would pay to have a wet
nurse if one had a calf like that). A tablespoonful of lime-water put in
the milk now and then will prevent the calf from “scouring,” a complaint
very common among calves brought up by hand. I believe that winter rye
makes a valuable soiling plant, but I have never tried it.
[1] It is better, as a rule, not to allow the calf to suck at
all. Aptness in learning to drink is influenced by heredity.
Calves from ancestors that have not been allowed to suck, learn
to drink more readily than those which have been allowed to run
with the dam.
A FEW WORDS AS TO GENERAL MANAGEMENT.
I think it cruel to keep cows tied up all summer. They do not require
much exercise, but fresh air they must have, and it is a great comfort
to them to lick themselves, although they ought to be well curried every
day. It is better to milk after feeding, as they stand more quietly.
Don’t allow your milk-maid to wash the cow’s teats in the milk pail, a
filthy habit much in vogue. Insist on her taking a wet cloth and wiping
the cow’s bag thoroughly before she commences to milk. A cow ought to be
milked in ten minutes, although the first time I undertook to milk alone,
I tugged away for an hour. I knew how much milk I ought to have, and I
was bound to get it. An old cow will eat more than a young one, but will
give richer milk. If you can get a cow with her second calf, you can keep
her profitably for five years, when she should be sold to the butcher.
There is nothing that will keep your cow-shed so neat, and add so much
to the value of your manure pile, as a few shovelfuls of dry earth or
muck thrown under the cow. It will absorb the liquid manure better than
anything else. Don’t allow your milk pans to be appropriated for all
sorts of household uses; you cannot make sweet, firm butter if the milk
is put into rusty old tin. Skim the milk twice a day into the stone
churn; add a little salt, and stir it well every time you put in fresh
cream. Use spring water, but don’t allow ice to come in contact with the
butter; it destroys both color and flavor. If your cream is too warm,
the butter will come more quickly, but it will be white and soft. When
the cream is so cold that it takes me half an hour to churn, I always
have the best butter. Don’t put your hands to it, work out the buttermilk
with a wooden paddle, and work in the salt with the same thing. There
is an old saying that one quart of milk a day gives one pound of butter
a week, and I think it’s a pretty fair rule, but don’t expect to buy a
cow that will give you thirty quarts of milk a day. There are such cows
I know, but they are not for sale. Be quite satisfied if your cow gives
half that quantity. Place the cow’s food where she cannot step on it,
but don’t put it high up; It is natural for them to eat with their heads
down. I think it is better that the family cow should have a calf every
year, provided you can have them come early in the spring or late in the
autumn. As to the time that a cow should be dry, that depends much upon
the way the cow was brought up. If she was allowed to go dry early in the
season with her first calf, she will always do it. A cow being a very
conservative animal, she should be milked as long as her milk is good.
When she is dry, stop feeding the provender, bran, and oil-cake, and give
her plenty of good hay, with some roots, until after she calves. The
provender and oil-cake being strong food, are apt to produce inflammation
and other troubles at calving time. You can feed turnips when she is dry,
at the rate of two pails a day, cut up fine, of course, but don’t feed
turnips when she is milking. I have tried every way to destroy the flavor
of turnips in milk, but without success. I have boiled it, put soda in
it, fed the cow after milking, but it was all the same—turnip flavor
unmistakable—and as we don’t like our butter so flavored, I only feed
turnips when the cow is dry.
The Rev. E. P. Roe in his delightful book called “Play and Profit in
My Garden,” says: “If a family in ordinary good circumstances, kept a
separate account of the fruit and vegetables bought and used during the
year, they would, doubtless, be surprised at the sum total. But if they
could see the amount they could and would consume if they didn’t have
to buy, surprise would be a very mild way of putting it.” The same rule
applies to the keeping of a cow. We buy one quart a day and manage to
get along with it. Our cow gives us ten to twenty quarts a day and we
make way with the greater part of it. I think with a cow and a garden,
one may manage to live, but life without either, according to my ways of
thinking, would be shorn of many of its pleasures.
[Illustration]
THE COW IN THE MIDDLE STATES.
BY W. L. BATTLES, GIRARD, PA.
Instead of writing on how a cow might be kept, I propose simply to tell
just how we manage our cow, what we feed her, how we procure that food;
in fact everything relating to her care, so that any one can go and do
likewise.
“Spot,” we call her, for she has a beautiful white spot in her forehead,
is not a Jersey, for we can not afford to buy one at the prices at which
they are held with us; nor is she a thorough-bred of any kind; yet she
is a good cow, of medium size, fills a twelve-quart pail each night and
morning, when her milk is in good flow, that raises a thick coat of rich
cream, which, after been churned, furnishes all the butter needed for a
family of six, and some to spare. Our place is small, only two acres,
and a portion of this is covered by the dwelling, barn, poultry-house,
etc. The fruit garden occupies about one-fourth of an acre, and from
this portion nothing is grown to furnish food for “Spot.” Adjoining the
barn there is half an acre of the land in good grass, or mostly clover,
and every spring a quart of clover seed is sown, so as fast as the old
plants die out, young ones take their places. A bushel of land plaster
is sown on this when the grass begins to start in the spring. This plot
produces a very heavy growth of grass and clover, enabling us to cut it
three times each season; about the first of June, August, and of October.
A coat of fine manure is always spread over the ground immediately after
each mowing. The grass is mostly cured, and makes fine hay for winter
feeding. Occasionally a small portion of the crop is used green for
soiling. Besides the land occupied by buildings, fruit garden, and clover
plot, there remains about one acre, which we call the garden. Here are
grown all the vegetables for the family’s use, besides some to sell.
About one-fourth of it is planted to Early Rose potatoes, and as soon as
these are sufficiently ripe for use or market, they are dug, and sweet
corn, in drills, for fodder, is sown upon the land. Another fourth of an
acre is planted to sugar beets; the ground being very rich, the yield is
always large; this last season (1879), though very dry, I harvested one
hundred and seventy-eight bushels. Our cow is very fond of the beets,
and I think there is nothing better to keep up a flow of milk, and they
give it no bad flavor, as do turnips. An additional fourth of an acre is
planted to sweet, or evergreen, corn; as fast as the corn is picked for
use or market, the green stalks are cut up, run through the cutting-box,
and every particle of them consumed. As soon as the corn is all
harvested, the ground it occupied is thoroughly fitted and manured, and
then sown to winter rye, to be used for soiling the next spring, after
which the ground is again prepared for corn. The remaining fourth acre is
devoted to early peas, beans, cabbages and other garden vegetables. As
soon as one crop is off, the ground is prepared, and something else is
almost always planted or sown; consequently, on the most of this acre,
two crops are produced each season, except where sugar-beets are grown,
or late cabbages, which require the whole season to mature. With the
clover on the half acre, and the forage crop and roots on the acre, we
have not only had sufficient food for the cow the entire season, but have
also kept our family horse, with the exception of one load of oat-straw
purchased for three dollars, to mix in with the fodder corn; this is hard
to cure sufficiently to keep bright and sweet through the winter, but by
mixing a layer of corn-fodder, and a layer of straw, it all comes out
nice and bright. Besides keeping both horse and cow, we have marketed
from this little farm, in berries, vegetables, butter, eggs, poultry, and
one fat hog, weighing, dressed, over three hundred pounds, four hundred
and sixty-eight dollars’ worth of the above produce, keeping enough for
our own use, and salting down one barrel of pork.
THE BARN.
The barn is twenty-five by thirty feet, with the stable on the south
side. The stall for “Spot” is five feet wide, and the floor on which
she stands is five feet long, with a manger two feet wide in front, one
and a half high next to the cow, and three feet next to the barn floor.
She is fastened with a wide strap around her neck, attached to a chain
eighteen inches long, which is fastened to a staple driven into a post
at the corner of the stall adjoining the manger; this gives her room to
turn her head so as to lick any portion of her body. The floor is made of
two-inch plank, battened on the under side with thin boards, raised from
the ground ten inches in rear and one foot in front; all the droppings
and urine fall into the four-foot alley behind. This alley has a clay
floor beaten perfectly solid and level. Next to the stable door is a
large bin, ten by seven feet, for storing road-dust or muck; at the other
end of the stable is another bin, ten by eleven feet, for storing leaves
for bedding. My great object is not only to make “Spot” comfortable,
and have her stable free from all bad odors, but to save all the manure,
both liquid and solid. The best absorbent is dried muck, pulverized,
or road-dust from clayey roads. As it is easier to procure the latter,
I generally make use of that, and always keep from two to three inches
of it in the alley; this effectually absorbs all the liquid portions
and all offensive odors. Twice each day, this is thrown out through a
window closed by a sliding shutter in the rear of the stall, under a
shed, where it remains until wanted for use. In the fall, I go to the
woods and procure a sufficient quantity of leaves to last until spring; a
liberal use of these not only makes a nice, soft, clean bed, but largely
increases the quantity of manure. The stable opens into a small yard,
across one corner of which runs a small brook. Each morning, the cow is
permitted to go out and drink; if the weather is pleasant, she is allowed
to remain out an hour for exercise. She is let out the same at night,
after sunset in warm weather, so that she will not be annoyed by flies.
The barn is well-battened, and is warm in winter; it is well ventilated
by two windows, but these, in summer, are darkened by blinds, with wide
slats, to keep out flies.
SYSTEM OF FEEDING.
Each morning, while “Spot” is eating her breakfast, she is well curried
with a curry comb or card, and if any filth is observed on her bag or
teats (which is very seldom), they are carefully washed off, if in
winter, with warm water. She is never scolded nor whipped; consequently
she never kicks over the pail, or holds up her milk. She is fed in winter
with a peck of sugar-beets cut up, both morning, noon, and night; also, a
bushel of cut feed, either corn-stalks or clover hay, wet with a pailful
of hot water, with two quarts of “sugar meal,” or bran, thoroughly mixed
together, with a little salt sprinkled over it. I generally use what is
known here as “sugar meal” to mix with her feed; it is corn meal from the
factory after the sugar or glucose has been extracted; it costs from ten
cents to twelve and a half cents per bushel, and I prefer it to bran,
and “Spot” likes it very much. We consider her a machine for converting
the food we give her into milk, and the more we can get her to eat and
digest, the more milk is obtained, and the greater the profit. It is
a good plan to change the food occasionally, substituting carrots for
beets, clover hay for corn fodder, for brutes, like mankind, are fond of
a variety. There are root-cutters that can be procured for cutting up
roots, but I have always used a common spade, ground sharp, and an empty
flour barrel to hold the beets. It takes but a few minutes to cut up a
mess of beets in that way.
MANURE.
With a bin of road-dust, and one of leaves, a winter’s supply of litter
is secured, and it is surprising what a pile of manure we have in the
spring. Another valuable source of manure is the pigsty, with plenty
of leaves for a warm bed, and sufficient road-dust to absorb all the
liquids, it is astonishing how clean our pigs are, and the sty is free
from all bad odors; the big potatoes and mammoth beets, show the richness
of the pig-pen fertilizer. I think our fifty hens pay for all their food
with the droppings the poultry-house furnishes. The roosts are over a
slanting platform, which is kept covered with road-dust both summer and
winter; the droppings fall on this floor, and roll down into a large box
twelve feet long, three feet wide, and three feet deep. The dust the
chickens work down with the droppings is sufficient to absorb all the
ammonia and preserve all the fertilizing qualities of this most valuable
guano. A large box of road-dust is always kept in the water-closet, a
liberal use of which furnishes a quantity of most valuable fertilizer,
besides freeing the closets from all noxious smells. The wash water and
slops from the kitchen are utilized by being thrown on a pile of sods and
other rubbish, which are forked over, and as soon as decayed, carted to
the manure pile. From so many sources we are enabled to give our small
farm a most liberal supply of manure each spring and fall, so that even
with the double cropping most of it gets, it continues to improve, and
yields more bountifully each succeeding season.
CROPS AND TILLAGE.
In the cultivation of sugar beets, the ground is first manured heavily,
plowed deep, and thoroughly pulverized with the cultivator, then
marked out in rows with a garden plow, two feet apart. Manure from the
poultry-house is scattered in each furrow, which should be lightly
covered with soil, so the seed will not come in contact with it; drop the
seeds about six inches apart, covering lightly with the garden rake. When
the leaves are about four inches long, thin out to one plant in a place,
and fill any vacancies with the plants pulled out. Hoe them thoroughly,
destroying all weeds, which can easily be done by cultivating each
time before hoeing, with an arrow cultivator. Keep the ground mellow,
and cultivate three or four times, after which they will take care of
themselves and soon cover the ground. With ground in good condition,
and a fair season, six hundred to eight hundred bushels per acre can be
easily produced. Let them grow until frost comes, when they should be dug
with a garden fork, the tops cut off, and stored for winter. Those to be
used before the first of March, are stored in the cellar, the others are
buried in a long pit, digging out a shallow place, piling up the roots
about three feet high, and three feet wide, covering well with straw
and sufficient soil to keep them from freezing, putting in a drain-tile
about every four feet in the top of the pile, with one end to project a
little through the covering, for ventilation. If the weather becomes very
cold, lay a turf over the tile, and remove when pleasant. I grow carrots
after the same plan, and store in like manner. I prefer beets, as they
are so much larger, it is less trouble to gather and take care of them,
and the crop is generally larger, still I always grow some carrots for a
change. I plant sweet corn in drills, always put some fertilizer along
the furrow, dropping the kernels about eight inches apart, with the rows
three feet wide, I commence planting soon after May first, and continue
at intervals until about July first, so I can have a fresh supply for
use, and market, all the season. The sweet corn being grown on the plot
sown to winter rye, for soiling, enables us to cut some portions of it
twice, before the ground is needed for corn. When sowing corn for fodder,
which is done as soon as we commence digging the early potatoes, I sow
it in drills two feet apart, and drop the kernels about one inch apart
in the drills, manure from the pigsty is first dropped in the furrow,
and covered with soil at least two inches deep, or the corn will not
come up. This fertilizer is so strong, if properly used it causes a most
extraordinary growth of stalks. While the corn is small, cultivate it
two or three times with a narrow cultivator, when it will take care of
itself, and there will be a surprising growth of stalks; I have them
often six feet high. Just before time for frosts, cut with a scythe, and
set up in small bunches bound around the top, and leave to cure until
cold weather. When it is to be put in the mow, spread alternately a
layer of stalks, and a layer of straw, and it will keep bright and sweet
until wanted. The rye for spring soiling is sown when the sweet corn is
picked, and stalks removed, in drills about ten inches apart. Fine manure
is spread on the ground after plowing, and thoroughly mixed with the
surface soil; one or two hoeings being given to keep the ground mellow;
to destroy any weeds that may make their appearance. By May first, the
early sown rye will cover the ground with a dense growth, at least four
feet high, furnishing a large quantity of most nutritious green food. On
those portions of the plot where the latest corn is to be planted, two or
three cuttings are made; this gives most excellent food for the cow, and
the quantity grown on this fourth of an acre will surprise any one who
has never tried it. There is quite a plot of early peas, and as soon as
the last picking occurs, while the vines are green, they are pulled and
fed to “Spot,” who relishes them very much. Turnips, or corn, are at once
sown on the ground where the peas were.
When our early cabbages are taken up, all the leaves, and much of the
stalks, are turned into milk by taking them to the cow’s manger, and
the ground at once planted, or sown, to something that will make more
food. The beet, carrot, and turnip tops, and late cabbage leaves, make
quite a quantity of feed late in the fall, if care is taken in saving
and preserving them. Possibly there may be some better forage crop than
“evergreen,” or sugar corn; I think another fall I will try the Minnesota
Amber Sugar Cane, in a small way. I tried Pearl Millet, in one row, this
season; it tillered, or spread wonderfully, but did not do so well as
the corn, as the stalks were small, and the millet makes such a feeble
growth, at first, it requires the whole season to produce as much fodder
as I get from corn sowed the fourth of July.
CALVING.
I generally manage to have the cow come in about the first of September;
by that means the six weeks time she is allowed to go dry, occurs during
the warmest portion of the summer, viz., in July and August, when,
with the facilities the person who keeps but one cow possesses, it is
difficult to make good butter. This is also the season when butter most
generally sells the lowest.
The calf is taught to drink after it is a week or ten days old, and fed
on a porridge made from skim-milk and wheat middlings, or shorts; by
the time it is six weeks or two months old it will be well fattened,
and can be sold to the butcher for veal, at a good price, for at that
season of the year veal is scarce and in demand. The cow being in full
flow of milk all winter, when butter is most always high, will pay a good
profit for her feed and care. A couple of weeks prior to the time the
calf should be born, I make a box stall on the barn floor, and permit the
cow to run loose in it until the calf is taken away to learn to drink.
During this time she should have a good bed of leaves, and the stall be
cleaned each night and morning. So far at such times I have experienced
no difficulty, or trouble; should any occur, it is better to apply to
an experienced person, than to try and “doctor” her yourself. After the
calf is born, I feed the cow on warm slops a day or two, permitting the
calf to suck until the swelling has gone from her bag, and it has assumed
its natural condition. Then, as before stated, teach it to drink, which
can easily be done by inserting the finger in its mouth, and putting its
head in the dish, cautiously withdrawing the finger a few times, and in a
short time you will have no difficulty, as it will help itself.
In conclusion, I can say I have tried to state just how our cow is
managed and kept. I presume there can be improvements made on our system.
I shall be glad to take advantage of the experience of others, at any and
all times. No record is kept of the milk obtained, or of the butter made.
We know we always have plenty for the family’s use, and considerable to
spare. Bread and milk furnish the children half their food a portion of
the time. Pure milk and plenty of fresh fruits, in abundance, we consider
afford one of the principal reasons why our family is so healthy, and we
have so few doctor’s bills to pay.
From our acre and a half, all the food has been grown for both cow and
horse, except the three dollars expended for straw. The “sugar meal”
given the cow has not cost five dollars during the past year. It is safe
to say, that one half, and probably more, of the clover, corn fodder,
green rye, etc., has been fed to the horse. Consequently the keeping of
the cow can all be credited to the small area of about three-fourths of
an acre of land, in addition to an outlay of not exceeding seven dollars
for meal, bran, and straw. This land, about one half of it, has also
produced, in addition, full crops for the use of the family, or market,
while the sour milk and buttermilk have largely assisted in making six
hundred pounds of pork. The calf, at less than two months of age, was
sold for eight dollars, which more than paid for the extra feed bought
for the cow. The family which has never kept a cow can hardly realize
the satisfaction and benefits derived from such a source. Children,
whose appetites are often capricious, will almost always relish a cup of
cool milk. Cream, for our coffee at breakfast, is much enjoyed by all,
but realized by few, and what can be more delicious than a nice dish of
strawberries smothered in rich yellow cream. When we consider the small
expense, the little trouble and care, contrasted with the great benefits
derived, it is, so to speak, surprising that any family should rest
satisfied without possessing a cow.
[Illustration: Fig. 2.—THE AYRSHIRE COW “OLD CREAMER.”]
THE COW IN THE GULF STATES.
BY GEORGE G. DUFFEE, MOBILE, ALA.
For several years I had been experimenting on a small scale in soiling
cattle. My area of land, however, was exceedingly limited, being only
a portion of the kitchen garden of a city residence, but my success
was, even in this small way, so satisfactory, that I determined at
some future day to try it on a more extensive scale. My reading and
experience convinced me, that in our favored southern climate, a half
acre of land, intelligently cultivated, would produce a supply of food
amply sufficient to support one cow through the year, and circumstances
favoring, I determined to try the experiment. In April, 1876, I became
owner of a lot two hundred and fifty feet long by one hundred and twenty
wide in the rear of my premises—the greater portion having been used as
a grass plot for a horse. I immediately began by fencing off a portion
one hundred and twenty feet by two hundred, running a wagon-way eight
feet wide down the center, which, with the space occupied by the stable
(say twenty by thirty feet), left nearly twenty-two thousand feet, or
within a fraction of half an acre, for actual cultivation. The land was
a sandy loam, covered with a thick sod of Bermuda and other grasses.
Years before it had been cultivated as a market garden, but latterly
given up to grass; it sloped to the south sufficiently to favor good
drainage. In and around the stable was a goodly lot of manure, which,
during April, was spread upon the land—some forty cart loads. On April
twentieth the land was thoroughly plowed with a two-horse turning-plow,
and harrowed until finely pulverized. On May first, I planted one half
of the land in Southern field corn, in drills two feet apart, with the
grains about one inch apart. The rows were lengthwise, to render after
cultivation more convenient. On May fourth, sugar corn was put in one
half of the remainder, planting at the same distance as the larger
variety. May sixth, the remaining fourth was sown heavily with German
or “Golden” Millet, in drills twelve inches apart. Seasonable showers,
followed by warm sunny days, soon produced a vigorous and rapid growth.
On May fifteenth, a Thomas’ harrow was run over the first planted corn,
and six days later over the second planting, and over the millet. On May
thirtieth, the corn was plowed, followed by a good hoeing. A fortnight
later, a second and last hoeing was given. The millet was also hoed
twice, after which the growth effectually shaded the ground, and thus
prevented the growth of weeds. In the meantime I had repaired the stable,
and had a large door cut into the side next to the original lot, and
made a stall for our pet Jersey cow. The floor was cypress, three inches
thick, and sloped slightly from the manger. By actual measurement of the
space occupied by the cow—giving just room for her hind feet to clear the
same, a trough, eight inches deep, and fifteen wide, was made to receive
the urine and droppings. The stall was four and one half feet wide, the
sides coming only half the length of the cow, and just her hight. The
manger extended entirely across the stall, was twelve inches wide at the
bottom, and eighteen at the top, and twelve deep, the bottom being twelve
inches above the floor. The fastening consisted of a five-eighths iron
rod, passing from one side of the stall to the other, along the center
of the manger, and one inch from it. On this rod was a ring, to which
was attached a short chain that ended in a snap-catch, to attach to a
ring fastened to the head-stall—the head-stall being made of good, broad
leather. Usually, in turning the cow out in the morning, the head-stall
was unbuckled and left in the stable; to fasten again was but a moment’s
work. By this arrangement the cow had full liberty to move her head,
without any possibility of getting fastened by the halter. The bottom of
this manger was made of slats, one half inch apart, so that no dirt could
collect. For feeding wet messes, there was a box made to fit one end of
the manger, which could be removed to be washed without trouble. With
plenty of sawdust, costing only the hauling, perfect comfort and perfect
cleanliness were matters of course.
Attached to the stable was a lot fifty by fifty feet, where, in pleasant
weather, the cow was turned, but free to go in and out of her stall at
pleasure. In this lot was a trough, connected with the pump, where a
supply of clean and fresh water was always kept. Daily this trough was
emptied and thoroughly cleaned. A cow may eat dirty feed occasionally,
but see to it that the water she drinks is pure. Unless this is attended
to her milk is unfit for human food.
The manure trough being supplied with sawdust, the urine, as well as the
droppings, were saved and removed daily to a covered shed located in one
corner of the lot, where it was kept moist, and worked over occasionally.
Our Jersey was due with her second calf about June twentieth, but was
still giving milk in April and May. Her feed from May first to June
fifteenth, was the run of a common pasture, with a mess twice daily of
wheat bran and corn meal, with hay. On June first she was dried up for a
brief resting spell. June fifteenth we began cutting the sugar corn, now
waist high. This was run through a cutter (making cuts three-quarters
of an inch), and fed to her three times a day, first sprinkling two
quarts of wheat bran over the corn, and continuing the hay feed twice
a day. At the same time she was taken from the pasture, not to go on
again until this experiment was finished. June twenty-second her udder
was so distended, it was deemed prudent to relieve it by milking. This
was done twice a day for three days. Here, at the South, there is a
foolish prejudice against doing this, the belief being strong among
the ignorant classes that it will cause the death of the coming calf.
In some instances I have found it necessary to relieve the udder daily
for a week before calving; I never knew any evil to result. At dawn
June twenty-fifth there was a fine heifer calf beside her. As soon as
convenient the cow was thoroughly milked, and a bucket of water, with one
quart each of corn meal and wheat bran stirred in, and a pinch of salt,
was given her, and nothing else except water for twenty-four hours. At
evening she was again milked to the last drop, and the calf left with
her during the night. Next morning a small feed of three quarts of wheat
bran, and one quart of corn meal, made pretty wet, was given her, and
her udder again thoroughly emptied. After milking, a small feed of hay
was given, and a pail of water placed near. The calf was separated from
her, but within sight. At mid-day the calf was allowed to take her fill,
and afterwards the udder stripped. At evening, as the cow seemed to be
free from any indications of fever, or inflamed bag, she was given a
full mess of corn meal, wheat bran, cotton-seed meal, and hay. Her calf
took her supper, and the udder was again stripped; that night the calf
was taken from her, never to suck again, as fresh milk in a city was too
valuable to feed to even a registered Jersey. Having, in years past, lost
several very fine cows from over-feeding and under-milking, at calving
time, I cannot urge too strongly what Col. Geo. E. Waring calls “high
starvation” at this critical period in a cow’s life. If a cow has been
decently cared for up to the day of calving, she needs nothing but rest,
quiet, and a light mash,—warm in cold weather—for twenty-four hours, and
then but light feeding for two or three days. But be sure to empty her
udder completely at least twice every twenty-four hours, and if the cow
is a deep milker, then three times; with this treatment, the feed can be
gradually increased to all that she will eat up clean.
TEACHING THE CALF TO DRINK.
It is a very easy matter to teach a calf to drink milk, when one has seen
the thing done. Next morning this calf was impatient for her mess of warm
milk, so, after milking her dam, I took a shallow pan, and putting two
quarts of milk into it proceeded to give the first lesson in a calf’s
life, of doing without a mother. The process is very simple; you merely
wet the first and second fingers of the left hand with milk, and place
them in the calf’s mouth, to give her a taste of what is in store. Repeat
this a few times, then gradually draw the pan near her mouth with the
right hand, using your left as above. When the calf permits your two
fingers to enter her mouth, raise the pan so that your left hand will
be immersed, and the calf, by suction, will draw the milk up between
the fingers. At mid-day, another mess of milk, and a second lesson was
given; at evening a third. Next morning the process was repeated, but
in this instance she did not need the fingers to guide her to what was
good for her; she readily accepted the situation, and stuck her pretty
nose into the warm milk, which rapidly disappeared to where it would do
the most good. But with milk worth ten cents per quart, and cream seven
times as much, it did not “pay” to use six quarts daily of rich Jersey
milk in this way, so, after a fortnight’s supply of the raw material, the
feed was gradually changed to sweet skim-milk for two weeks, and then
substituting hay-tea, the milk ration was cut down to two quarts daily.
Beginning with a tablespoonful of cotton-seed meal, thoroughly mixed with
the feed, the quantity was increased in ten days to one pint daily. At
one month old, she was gradually taught to eat bran by stirring it into
her food.
The preparation of hay-tea is very simple. Nice hay is run through a
cutter, and taking an ordinary two-gallon pailful, boiling water is
poured upon it; it is then covered and allowed to steep for twelve hours.
This makes a most excellent food, and calves thrive upon it. The most
stylish and vigorous calf I ever saw, was raised upon hay-tea, with bran
and cotton-seed meal as here described. I enter thus fully into the best
manner of raising a calf without its mother, for the especial benefit of
my southern readers, where the thriftless habit of allowing the calf to
suck its dam, oftentimes until a year old, so generally prevails. In this
instance the little heifer got along nicely until two months old, when an
aggravated attack of scours set in, but by timely doses of laudanum in a
mess of warm gruel, poured down her throat twice a day, for three days,
a cure was effected. In ordinary cases of scours, a change to dry food
will correct it, but it is well to watch and not to permit the disease
to become seated. A few years ago, a very valuable young Jersey heifer,
received from the vicinity of Philadelphia, was taken in this way, while
undergoing the usual course of acclimation incident to northern cattle
brought south, and the simpler treatment proving of no effect, I gave
injections twice a day of rice-water and laudanum, besides drenching her
with corn-gruel and laudanum. This was kept up for ten days; we carried
her safely through, and her present value amply compensates for the time
and trouble expended.
FOOD OF THE COW.
But let us return to the cow. On the morning of June twenty-ninth, we
began giving her a fair feed of green corn, adding to it wheat bran, and
cotton-seed meal. July second we fed her all the corn stalks she would
eat, continuing to add bran and cotton meal, giving four quarts of the
former and two of the latter; and this was her daily food, including
the German Millet, treated in the same way, until September. The green
food was given three times a day, but the bran and cotton meal added
only morning and night. Occasionally a day’s supply was cut early in the
morning, and allowed to wilt before feeding, but in this, as well as in
many other matters, my man-of-all-work did as circumstances permitted.
His various duties about the place gave him but little time to reduce to
an exact system the care and feed of a cow. She had a good stable, and
plenty to eat, received daily a good brushing, and was treated kindly.
Yet, she was our servant (and a most faithful one she was), and we were
not her’s, or slaves to any arbitrary clock-work regularity. She was
fed and milked at regular intervals, but beyond this it was not always
convenient to have regular hours at her stable. We did not keep her as
an exhibition of a model cow in a model stable, and to exemplify a model
system of care and keep. Like thousands all over the land, we kept her
simply for the profit she yielded, in the way of milk and butter. It has
often struck me, in reading the many suggestions and hints about how to
keep a cow, to be found in some agricultural and live-stock journals,
that were they all carried into practical operation, it would take the
entire time of two able-bodied men to attend one animal—one to be always
on hand during the day, the other to serve at night. Now common sense
is a good thing, even when applied to the management of cows, and my
experience convinces me that the average man wishes only to know the
cheapest and easiest way to have an abundant supply of rich, wholesome,
and clean milk, and with pride enough in the possession of a good cow to
furnish a good shelter and comfortable quarters. Beyond these, breeders
of fancy and high-priced stock may go to any extreme, and find a paying
business in doing so, but the village or city owner of one or two cows,
kept solely for his own use, can not afford to indulge in any of this
“upper-tendom” style of cow life; it won’t pay him. As a row of corn was
cut and fed, the land was plowed, manured, and more corn (common field)
drilled in thick, so that the ground for the whole summer presented the
appearance of an experimental corn field, with corn at every stage of its
growth.
This was kept up through the months of July, August, September, and
October. Indeed, the half of this yield was more than sufficient for
keeping the cow in superb condition, so that much the greater portion was
cut in the tasselling stage and cured for winter feed. After September
begins, it will not do to sow corn; the worms destroy it, but in our
southern Bean, or “cow pea,” we have one of the very best of soiling
crops. Sown either broadcast, or in drills, it does equally well, makes a
rapid growth, and affords a tempting and nutritious food for cattle. It
grows until checked by frost, and I know of no plant, save Indian corn,
that produces more weight to a given quantity of land. In this instance
we fed it daily during October and late into November, before a frost put
an end to its use in its green state. Anticipating a frost, it was cut
and cured for winter feed. Properly cured, no hay equals it for cattle.
November twenty-fourth our cow went into winter quarters, and for her
winter feed there were over four thousand eight hundred pounds of well
cured corn-fodder, and one thousand five hundred pounds of good pea-vine
hay—far more than she could consume.
Early in December, after spreading over the land all the manure on hand,
it was plowed again with a two-horse turning plow, and sowed thickly to
oats, harrowing them in. A seasonable rain gave them a good start, so
they were well prepared for the vicissitudes of winter—a good stand and
vigorous growth. The cow now received a daily ration of corn fodder and
pea hay, run through the cutter, and after mixing thoroughly three quarts
of wheat bran and one quart of cotton-seed meal, were wet with water
(warm in cold weather). This was given her in the morning, and the same
quantity at evening. The corn fodder and pea-hay for a day’s feed were
fifteen pounds of each, more or less. On this food she was kept through
the winter, giving milk of excellent quality, and in good quantity.
In February, she was tethered every fair day in the oats, and in March,
we fed her a good mess of fresh cut oats, still, however, keeping up the
winter feed of corn fodder, pea-hay, wheat bran, and cotton meal. About
April first, the feed of green oats was increased to all she would eat,
feeding three times daily, and the excellence of this diet was shown by a
marked increase in the quantity of her milk. Though due to calve again in
July, she continued to supply a family of ten persons with an abundance
of milk. Late in April, when the oats were in the milk state, they were
cut and cured for hay, making a little over a ton of good food.
Upon summing up the result, the following dollar and cents view of the
experiment of sustaining a cow on a half acre is submitted. The labor
expended in cultivation is not put down as an item of expense, as the
carriage horse was used in plowing, and the hired man did the rest.
_Dr._
To 1,500 pounds Wheat Bran, at 90c. $13.50
” 200 pounds Corn Meal, at 70c. 1.40
” 800 pounds Cotton-seed Meal, at $1 8.00
” 300 pounds Hay, at 75c. 2.25
------
Total $25.15
_Cr._
By sale of 2,200 pounds of Corn-fodder, at 60c. $13.20
” 2,100 pounds of Oats, at 75c. 15.75
------
$28.95
Profit $ 3.80
But the profit above shown does not express the real profit. A year’s
continuous supply of rich milk in abundance, for a large household, cream
for special occasions, and that best of luxuries, delicious home-made
butter, and one hundred dollars for the little heifer when six months
old, aggregate the chief results of the experiment.
For the best results in soiling, no crop compares, as far as my
experience goes, with our Southern variety of Indian corn; on rich land
it produces marvellously. I have raised it at the rate of one hundred
thousand pounds (or fifty tons) per acre. There is no difficulty in
producing three crops in one season on the same land. But cattle need
a variety of food in soiling, as in other forms of feeding. Oats are
excellent, and come in early. Cat-tail Millet (“Pearl Millet”) is a rapid
grower, but cattle are not specially fond of it; they like German Millet
better. Garden (or English) Peas make an excellent food, coming into use
in March, and lasting to June. I remember one year I produced five crops
for soiling, on the same land, in one year, namely: oats, three of corn,
and one of cow-peas. The last named is a superb food late in the year,
after corn has gone. I have never experimented with roots, nor am I aware
of any being cultivated in the South as a soiling crop. Cabbages set out
in September and October will be ready for feeding in December, and will,
next to corn, produce the largest weight of green food. One year I fed
them to a considerable extent, and found my cows were very partial to
them. By beginning with cabbages in December, to be succeeded by oats in
March, then peas, corn, and millet, to wind up in November with cow-pea,
a cow in our climate can be soiled every day in the year.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: Fig. 3.—THE JERSEY COW “ROSALEE.”]
THE VILLAGE COW IN NEW ENGLAND.
BEING THE JOURNAL OF THE KEEPER.
BY HENRY E. ALVORD, EASTHAMPTON, MASS.
In writing upon this subject the narrative form is convenient, and while
it cannot be claimed that this is entirely a “true story,” it may be said
to be founded on fact. Personal experience is my basis, and whatever of
fancy may be interwoven with the facts would have been quite practicable,
and all ought to have occurred as narrated, if all did not.
Let me premise by saying that I own a comfortable little home in a
village of a few thousand inhabitants, not a thousand miles from New
York, supporting my family by a moderate income earned from day to day,
and my occupation is such as to enable me to spend an average of three
hours of daylight on my place, from the middle of March to the middle
of October, and occasionally a whole day besides. Thus I can make and
care for my garden, which for some years has uniformly been an excellent
one, quite a model, though I say it. Of this sort of work I have always
been very fond, as well as of domestic animals, all kinds of which were
familiar to me when a boy.
MAY 1ST, 1875.—For several years I have kept more or less poultry, and
sometimes a pig; there is so much from a good garden that is otherwise
wasted. The ambition of the family is to own a horse and a cow. It has
been talked about a good deal, but we are agreed that the horse would be
a pure luxury, in our circumstances, and must wait. The cow I have felt
would be a luxury too, that is, cost more than it would produce, but on
this point the good wife has differed with me, claiming that it would be
a real economy. It has been a part of our domestic policy to use milk and
butter liberally, thereby keeping down the butcher’s bill and buying very
little lard. Of the value of milk as an article of food, in its natural
state, and in the many ways which it can be used in cooking, there can
be no doubt, especially where there are young and growing members of
the family. Still, I have been skeptical on the economy of keeping a
cow, and to convince me, the help-meet recently proved, from well kept
accounts, that during the last two years there have been consumed by our
family of five persons, one thousand five hundred and forty-five quarts
of milk, averaging seven cents a quart, and three hundred and sixty-one
pounds of butter, average price thirty-three cents a pound. These have
amounted to a cash expenditure of one hundred and thirteen dollars and
sixty-four cents a year, which was a decided surprise to me, and feeling
pretty sure the expense need not exceed two dollars a week, I yielded
to the argument; am the owner of a cow, and here record the result of
my experiment. One of the pleasant spring days of last week, we took a
drive among the farms of the vicinity, and selected a good looking cow
which had just dropped her second calf. The price paid was sixty-five
dollars, to be delivered to me to-day, without the calf. The man I bought
of called her “pure Alderney,” but she looks large of her age for that
race, weighing somewhat over seven hundred pounds, and if, two or three
generations back there was a cross of Ayrshire, or of Guernsey, it is all
the better. My belief is that she has a streak of Ayrshire blood, and
that she will make a fine cow. Being three years old next month (exact
date unknown), it has been decided that our cow is to be known as “June.”
MAY 1ST, 1876.—When “June” was bought, it was in the full expectation
that pasturage could be hired in a small lot adjoining the rear of mine.
I supposed it was fixed, but the spring had been favorable, the grass
on the meadow promised well, and the owner concluded he would mow it,
so that arrangement fell through. By that time I was too late to secure
room in the only pasture convenient to the village, and I have been
forced to keep her in the stable and a small stable yard, the whole year.
The result is more than satisfactory, considering the disadvantageous
circumstances.
A year ago to-day “June” arrived, in fair condition, save that her coat
looked a little rough, and with a good bag of milk; her daily yield
that month was about twelve quarts. In a day or two I noticed that when
in the yard, she rubbed her neck vigorously against the corner of the
stable and sometimes backed up to a building or fence for the purpose. An
examination proved that she had vermin upon her; so I made a pail full of
strong suds, with soft soap, and put into it an ounce of sulphuric acid,
and with this I sponged the parts infested, twice daily, for a few days.
This seemed efficient and there has been no such trouble since.
For long forage “June” had only dry food, good fine hay, until late
in May, and then I began to give her a green bite whenever I could,
clippings from the yard, trimmings of early vegetables and whatever there
was to spare from the garden. Besides this, everything she ate had to be
bought, except a few roots used since February. A little bran was fed for
the first few days, and gradually increased, so that during the summer
she received four pounds daily, fed in two parts, morning and night.
Later in the season corn-meal was added to the ration, and at times oats
were substituted for the bran. In the winter, eight pounds of meal and
bran, half and half, mixed, was the daily allowance. Buying hay in small
quantities I managed to keep both rowen and clover hay on hand, some of
it very fresh, and could thus vary the dry food. Also, for variety, I
frequently gave one cut feed a day, moistened. Besides this, I obtained
and worked in, during the summer, a lot of half-ripe oats, in the straw,
which had lodged and were cured like hay. The food, although thus often
changed, was changed carefully.
In my garden I made a large parsnip bed, and followed my earliest peas
with carrots, so that in the fall there were several bushels of these
roots. The carrots were buried in the garden, a mellow loam, and the
parsnips left in the ground. The former were opened during a thaw in
February, and a few fed to “June” each day, lasting until the end of
March; by that time I could get the parsnips and they have just given
out. When I began the roots the grain was gradually withheld and she has
had none since February. These roots have had a most apparent effect,
giving her coat a bright, thrifty look, and she is in fine condition
for calving, which is expected in ten days. But the roots made it hard
to dry off the cow. She was shrinking in milk fast when we began on
the carrots, then started up again and was giving about three quarts a
day in March, when the milk (and especially the cream) began to have a
sharp, unpleasant, bitter taste, and we soon had to give up using it.
It then took a fortnight to dry her off, which was done by lessening
the roots, milking not quite dry, then only once a day, and once in two
days. Water has been offered three times a day, through the year, all
she would drink, salt has always been within her reach. All summer, and
every mild, dry day in winter, “June” has passed some hours in the stable
yard. A large amount of bedding has been necessary, and for this I have
used the waste hay, the rakings of the yard last autumn, the scrapings
of the garden walks, garden litter, and the leaves from a row of maple
trees in front of the house, carefully saved for the purpose. So much in
the stall, “June” has required more personal care, and it has been made a
rule to rub and brush her body enough to keep it clean and free from dead
skin. But I never use a harsh card; nothing is better for rubbing than a
piece of old seine or very coarse bagging. Everything about the cow, too,
is kept clean and sweet.
The result of this continuous stabling has been a rapid accumulation of
manure, and this having been mixed with all the suitable refuse of the
place, and forked over several times, I this spring have on hand a huge
pile of rich compost. It is more than can be used on the garden, and the
newer part has been corded up under a temporary shed for sale or future
use. This alone well pays for all my extra work in keeping the cow, as I
have yearly been obliged to buy for the garden.
Our plan during the year has been to sell a little milk to neighbors, set
aside two quarts daily for family use, cream and all. The cream from the
remainder has been made into butter, and an accurate account kept of the
butter produced.
The following is the result of this first year keeping one cow:
EXPENSES:
Interest 7 per cent on cost of cow $ 4.55
4 tons of Hay, av. $20 80.00
500 lbs Oats in straw 4.25
960 lbs. Wheat Bran, @ $1.20 11.52
350 lbs. Corn-Meal @ $1.10 3.85
4 bus. Oats @ 55c. 2.20
------
Expended $106.37
Less 400 lbs. Hay on hand 3.00
------
Year’s expense 103.37
======
RETURNS:
155 qts. Milk sold @ 7c. $ 10.85
311 qts. Skim-milk, @ 3c. 9.33
------
Sales $ 20.18
620 qts. Milk for family, @ 7c. 43.40
123 lbs. Butter made, @ 35c. 43.05
------
Year’s return $106.63
======
Memorandum—Cost $103.37
Less sales 20.18
------
83.19
Plus purchases—
88 qts. Milk 6.16
52 lbs. Butter 16.64
------
Cow products cost family $105.99
======
Here is a net balance of three dollars and twenty-six cents in favor of
the cow, without allowing anything for the abundant supply of skim-milk
and butter-milk which has been profitably used in the poultry yard as
well as at the house—or for the big compost heap, which could readily be
sold.
The figures also show that the family has had a better supply of cow
products than last year, at seven dollars and sixty-five cents less
expense. No labor is charged, for I am not so much keeping an exact
account of the maintenance of the cow, as of the profit of my keeping
one, taking care of her myself. And no credit is given for manure, as I
mean to apply that to reducing the cost of keeping in the future. The
cow might have been fed at less cost, but I intended to have her improve
on my hands, and she has done so. “June” now weighs seven hundred and
sixty-two pounds, is about to have her third calf, and is certainly worth
more than was paid for her.
Altogether, in spite of unfavorable conditions there is no occasion to
complain of the result of the year.
MAY 1ST, 1877.—Last spring, my neighbor, north, was willing to let me
have his acre and a half of meadow for pasturage, but wanted thirty-five
dollars for the season. I would not pay that, and, instead, hired a
place for “June” in a large pasture half a mile or more distant, paying
twenty dollars for the season, May fifteenth, to October fifteenth, and
four dollars to a boy for driving. On the ninth of May, the cow dropped
a bull calf without difficulty, and I gave it away the next day. No
special care was needed or given, except a little caution as to feeding,
and on the fifteenth the cow went to pasture. She did remarkably well
until early in July, being in pasture during the day, and at the stable
at night. Then the weather grew very hot, the pasture dry, and “June”
began to fail rapidly in her milk; so I commenced feeding a little bran,
and offered hay when she came up at night. Later, a friend recommended
cotton-seed meal, and a hundred weight of that was obtained and fed with
good results, two or three pounds a day. August was a month of intense
dry heat, and the pasture became of little use except for the exercise,
shade, and water. In spite of meal and hay fed at night, “June’s” yield
of milk shrank to three quarts a day, and we feared she would go dry.
August fifth, I made the change of sending her to pasture just before
six o’clock in the evening, as the boy went after the other cows, and
bringing her up to the stable in the morning, where I kept her during the
day. This was an improvement, and also gave better opportunity of feeding
sweet corn stalks, vegetable trimmings and the like, fresh from the
garden. The grain was continued through August, and she ate more or less
hay. At the end of the month she was giving over a gallon of milk a day.
Rains came early in September, the pasturage soon became good again, and
the daily mess of milk steadily increased until November. By that time
she was in the stable for the winter, and the treatment since has been
practically a repetition of last year. My root patch in the garden was
enlarged, as the result of last year’s experience, and accordingly I put
eight or ten bushels of carrots into my cellar in October, covering them
with sand, and left a fine lot of parsnips in the ground. I began feeding
the carrots in January, two or three a day, just for a relish; gradually
increased them, until in February the cow received half a peck or more,
and thus they lasted into March. Then I dried her off, getting the last
milk to use March twenty-eighth. Grain feeding was stopped the first of
March, and she has had none since. After the cow was fully dry, I began
on the parsnips, and she is now getting half a peck daily, with all the
hay she will eat. “June” will be fresh again on the twentieth of this
month.
The season has not satisfied me. Not only has the weather been
unfavorable, (we must expect severe summers occasionally,) but I don’t
like sending the cow to a distant pasture which I can know very little
about, and where nobody knows how the other animals treat her. I shall
never do this again if any other arrangement can be made.
The account for the year is as follows:
EXPENSES.
Interest at 7 per cent. on cost of cow $4.55
Hay from last year 3.00
2½ tons Timothy Hay @ $18 45.00
Pasturage and driving 24.00
750 lbs. Wheat Bran @ $1.10 8.25
450 lbs. Corn-Meal @ $1 4.50
100 lbs. Cotton-seed Meal 2.00
------
Expended $91.30
Less hay on hand 2.00
------
Year’s expense $89.30
RETURNS.
42 qts Milk sold at 6½c. $2.73
286 qts. Skim-milk sold at 3c. 8.58
------
Sales $11.31
640 qts. Milk for family, at 6½c. 41.60
109 lbs. Butter made @ 32c. 34.88
------
Year’s returns $87.79
======
Memorandum—Cost $89.30
Less sales 11.31
------
77.99
Plus purchases—
86 qts. Milk @ 6½c. $ 5.59
70 lbs. Butter @ 30c. 21.00
------
Cow products cost family $104.58
Comparing this with last year’s statement, it will be seen that although
there is a small balance against the cow, she is still, all things
considered, a profitable part of the domestic establishment.
MAY 1ST, 1878.—Dissatisfied with the last year’s management, and seeing
that there would last spring be a large surplus of fine compost on hand,
more profitable to use than to sell, I planned a new arrangement in the
autumn of 1876 for keeping my one cow. First, I secured the meadow west
of my lot, renting it from the owner from October first, 1876, until
April first, this year, for thirty dollars. The acre and a half yielded
about two tons of hay in 1876, but no rowen; the aftermath was good,
however, when I came in possession. The south end of it, although in
good heart, was weedy and uneven. I drove some strong stakes, and ran a
wire fence across, in continuation of my southern boundary, thus cutting
off just about a quarter of an acre in rear of my neighbor, south. This
piece I dressed with compost made the summer just preceding, and had it
plowed and cross-plowed before the ground froze, in preparation for a
root crop. The soil is a deep, mellow, sandy loam, but rich. Last spring
the new root patch was plowed once, well dressed from the compost pile of
1875-6, and that harrowed in. (There was enough of the same compost for
my garden, and to spare, so last June there was still on hand the manure
of about a year’s collection put up in good shape.) The rest of the work
I was able to do myself. My root-garden, laid out in rows running north
and south, was divided as follows: eight square rods of parsnips next
to neighbor, south, on the slope, where they caught the wash from his
garden; twelve square rods of carrots and ten rods of mangolds; in the
point west to the stream I put sweet corn at first, and followed it with
strap-leafed turnips, ten square rods. Without going into the details of
root-culture, which any one who has made a good garden knows all about,
I put into my house cellar last fall fifty-two bushels of Long Orange
Carrots, and over forty bushels of Long Yellow Mangel Wurzels (these
monstrous, twisted, forked roots are awkward things to measure, but
there must have been a ton or more in weight), left in the ground from
twenty to twenty-five bushels of Hollow-crowned Parsnips, and harvested
thirty-six bushels of English Turnips. This was more than I had bargained
for. I see now that roots enough might have been raised in my old garden,
and the parsnips would have done much better there, but I sold twenty
bushels each of carrots and turnips for more than enough to cover all
expenditures for seed and hired labor.
A year ago to-day, I turned “June” into her new pasture of an acre and a
quarter; the grass was then starting well, and I preferred to have the
change gradual. She ate more or less hay until the end of the month.
Doors and gates were so fixed that she could be in stall, yard, or
pasture at pleasure, and could drink at the stream bordering the meadow.
CALVING AND AFTER-TREATMENT.
On the eighteenth of May, her bag began to swell, and became feverish.
A quart or two of watery milk was drawn at intervals of eight hours for
the next three days, and the udder was bathed as often in tepid water,
and gently but thoroughly rubbed with goose oil, in which camphor-gum
had been dissolved. Each day, also, she was given a quarter of a pound
of Epsom Salts, dissolved in a quart of “tea” made from poke-weed root
(_Phytolacca decandra_), which all druggists now keep in store; this
was administered as a “drench,” from a bottle, her head being held up
while she swallowed it. On the morning of the twenty-second, being two
days overdue, she calved, having a hard time, but producing without help
a fine large heifer. Very soon after, I gave her a bucket of cool (not
cold) water, in which was stirred a quart of wheat bran, a half pound of
linseed-meal, previously scalded, and a handful of pulverized poke or
garget root. This mess was repeated at noon, and the bag milked dry. A
little later, the after-birth naturally passed off and was removed. The
udder remained hot, knotty, and so tender that when the calf sucked I had
to protect it from the mother’s kicks, and also to prevent it from taking
one teat which was extremely sore. From this quarter I carefully drew the
milk with one of a set of four “milking-tubes,” which I bought two years
ago to do my milking, but soon discarded; here they came in use, just the
thing wanted, but one as good as four. At night I milked dry, gave a dose
of half a pound of Salts, with one ounce of Nitre, and a warm Bran-mash.
The bag was well rubbed as before. The cow ate some hay during the night,
and a few cabbage sprouts in the morning. That day (twenty-third), she
was on the pasture a little while, and had a full bag of milk, but still
hot and tender. The calf was separated from the cow at daylight, and
allowed to suck four times during the day, the bag being milked dry, and
then oiled and well rubbed every time. The bowels appearing to be in a
sufficiently active state, appetite improving, and her eyes natural, the
physic was discontinued, the cow allowed to eat grass and hay at will,
and for several days the calf sucked at daylight, noon, and dark, the
milk left by it being all drawn. The bag was rubbed and anointed two or
three times a day, and a little extract of Belladonna added to the oil
used. Under this treatment the inflammation gradually subsided. As soon
as the cow would allow her calf to take the tenderest teat, I kept it on
that side as much as possible while sucking. At the end of a week after
calving, the udder was again in sound condition. The calf was kept until
the first of June, and then the owner of its sire took it in full for
service of bull three seasons. We then began to get the full flow of
milk, and the pasture being good, it was a fine mess daily. At that time,
I began to measure the milk, and have done so ever since. “June” gave
four hundred and eighty-two quarts the month she was five years old, an
average of sixteen quarts a day.
Until the last of July, the cow got all her food from the pasture, and
one acre would have done as well as one and a quarter. For the next
five or six weeks, the grass was hardly sufficient; it was, for this
period, based upon the experience of August, 1876, that the corn had
been provided. The ten rods of Mammoth Sweet, three hundred and fifty to
four hundred hills, had been put in at five different plantings, a week
apart, and the earliest was just forming ears the last of July when I
began using it, at first once a day, then twice. For each feed, the whole
plants of three or four hills were taken, and chopped in a straw-cutter,
ears and all, into two-inch lengths. This was eaten with great relish,
and during August the cow spent most of the daytime standing in the
stream where shaded by trees and grazed at night. The pasturage improved
again before the corn gave out, so quite a nice piece of winter fodder
was saved from the piece. Then all through September there was every day
more or less of green-corn husks, carrot and beet tops, other vegetable
and fruit trimmings, clean refuse from house and garden, good food for
the cow, so that again one acre of pasture would have sufficed. During
October, the carrots and mangolds were harvested, and their tops gave the
cow more than she could manage. I also began feeding turnips the last
of October, a few with mangel tops at first, increasing until she ate
more than half a bushel a day, tops and all. Before the ground froze,
the turnips were piled in the barn, without trimming, and covered with
hay; were kept safely until the last were fed, November twenty-eighth.
The problem of winter feeding really came up the first of November. I
had a large supply of roots on hand of my own raising, and the hay and
grain to buy. So I went to the books, and after studying both practice
and science, decided upon the following daily rations for the next six
months: November first to May first, fifteen pounds of meadow rowen and
clover hay, in about equal parts; one pound each of coarse wheat bran and
corn-meal, mixed. During November, one-half bushel turnips and two pounds
cotton-seed meal; December and January, one-half bushel carrots and one
and one-half pound cotton-seed meal; February and March, one-half bushel
(or more) of mangels and one pound cotton-seed meal; April, one-half
bushel parsnips and one and one-half pounds cotton-seed meal; also, one
hundred pounds additional hay, and my corn-stalks, for February and March.
This plan has been carried out with little variation. Of course the
food has not been accurately weighed daily. The grain portions, kept in
barrels, have been dipped out with tin cups, but have held out just about
as expected; the quantity of hay and roots has been guessed at.
THE METHOD OF FEEDING
and other work at the stable during the winter has been this: Between
six and seven o’clock A. M. stall cleaned, cow brushed off, bedding and
absorbents fixed, the milking done, and then a feed of six or seven
pounds of chaffed hay, slightly moistened, and the bran and meal mixed
with it. After this, a bucket of water left in the stall, except in the
coldest weather. The bucket is fixed near the feed-box, so it can not
be tipped over, and it has generally been found empty at noon. At that
hour, the regular watering, two or three pailfuls, and then a small bunch
of hay thrown in the box; the stall cleaned also. Between six and seven
at night, the milking done and bedding fixed, the roots fed, chopped up
pretty fine with a spade, and the cotton-seed meal sprinkled over them.
Hay then given, and the cow left for the night.
It was my intention to feed the roots in two parts, morning and night,
and I should have preferred this, but my time in the morning was limited.
Preparing the roots over night, they sometimes froze, but I could cut the
hay at evening, ready for the morning chop-feed. As one kind of root was
about to give out, some of the next to be fed were mixed in, and thus
sudden changes avoided. The extra hay and stalks calculated for February
and March were not used exactly in those months, but consumed during
severely cold and windy spells, being added to the usual noon and night
portions. At all times, the cow had, under this plan, full as much as
she was ready to eat up clean. The hay left on hand a year ago was all
used last summer, and before November a full load each of the best rowen
and clover hay were put into the barn, one thousand six hundred and one
thousand four hundred pounds respectively, and there is a little left.
It ought also to be mentioned that while the cow was mainly fed on sweet
corn, last July and August, I was obliged to add about two pounds of
cotton-seed meal a day, to give quality to the milk; it was fed dry, at
noon. As soon as the feeding of carrot tops began, this meal was omitted,
but it was again needed when turnips were substituted for carrot and beet
tops. The ration of mangolds was increased to about two bushels in three
days, because there were plenty of them, and my house cellar being rather
warm, they commenced to rot. I was very careful to give the cow only
sound roots. This extra food in February and March resulted in a better
milk record by “June” than in the two months next preceding. I shall feed
more roots the coming year. There were more parsnips than could be well
used; they were not needed until April, and I sold five dollars’ worth,
as an offset to what the cow got from last year’s kitchen garden. The cow
goes on to pasture to-day.
Therefore, in review, the cow has been carried through the year with the
one and one-half acres rented for thirty dollars, and forty-five dollars
expended for hay and grain. Against the manure taken for my garden
may be placed the cleanings of the poultry house, the contents of the
earth-closet, and the garden refuse and bedding, all of which go into
the compost heap. The item of labor alone remains, and as all that has
been hired (including the plowing of the garden) was paid from sales of
surplus roots, no further account is taken of that; my own time was well
spent, as the balance sheet shows. Last August, we fully determined that
it would be better for the family cow to be fresh in September than in
the spring. The heat of summer is the time when it is most difficult to
keep a cow properly fed for a good flow of rich milk on a little place
like this. It is the time when milk is plenty and cheap, if one wants to
buy, and most difficult to manage or dispose of if one has much on hand.
It is almost impossible to make good butter in dog-days, living as we
do, with no special appliances, and it is not worth while for us to get
a patent creamer and a supply of ice. In the spring, we don’t want a dry
cow, but are willing to have one in August. July, with its increasing
heat and decreasing pasturage, is a favorable time to dry off a cow. The
keeper of one cow can not afford to have her dry more than six weeks in
the year, and may manage to have this period four weeks, or even less.
Accordingly, I have arranged for “June” to come in next September, and
shall in future practice “winter-dairying.” Indeed, we have done so the
past season, for with liberal feeding of a succulent character, the cow
has held out well in her milk. She is now giving between five and six
quarts a day, while not yet on grass, and her total yield for eleven
months, since June first (or rather for the year), is found to be two
thousand seven hundred and forty-six quarts. Here is my third year’s
annual account with “June:”
EXPENSES.
Interest at 7 per cent. on cost of cow $ 4.55
Rent of 1½ acres of land 30.00
Hay left from last year 2.00
1½ tons of Hay bought 28.50
350 lbs. of Cotton-seed Meal and freight 6.80
159 lbs. Corn-Meal 1.50
200 lbs. Bran @ $1.15 per cwt 2.30
------
Year’s expense $75.65
RETURNS.
685 qts. Milk sold at 6c. $41.10
464 qts. Skim-milk sold at 2½c. 11.60
------
Sales $52.70
670 qts. Milk used @ 6c. 40.20
127 lbs. Butter made @ 30c. 38.10
------
Year’s return $131.00
=======
Memorandum—Cost keeping $75.65
Less sales 52.70
------
$22.95
Plus purchases—
55 qts. Milk @ 6c. 3.30
53 lbs. Butter @ 30c. 15.90
------
Cow products cost family $42.15
An absolute profit of fifty-five dollars from the cow is shown, and a
still larger saving in family expenses, besides nine hundred quarts of
skim-milk and butter-milk used in the house and poultry-yard and given
away. The yield of the cow shows “June” to be a superior animal, and
that is what the keeper of one cow should have, for it costs little more
in food and care than an ordinary one. But if the cow had been only
of medium quality and no new milk could be sold, it would have been a
profitable operation. And if, instead of selling new milk, as much butter
had been made as possible, there would still have resulted a balance of
over twenty dollars in favor of the cow.
[Illustration: Fig. 4.—PLAN OF VILLAGE LOT AND SURROUNDINGS.]
MAY 1ST, 1880.—(To come within the required limits of this paper the
journal of the last two years must be condensed. Therefore, omitting
detailed descriptions, the general facts are given, and some opinions
derived from the five years recorded.) For the year ending May, 1879, the
method of keeping “June” was much the same as in that last described,
but more roots were raised and fed; some hay was made, and only straw
and grain food purchased. The result was even better than that shown by
the last account. During the year just ended, the fifth since “June” was
bought, I tried soiling, keeping the cow in stall and yard almost all
the time, and have actually got through without buying hay or straw,
using only one acre and a quarter to produce all the long forage needed.
There is so much left over that I am satisfied one acre well managed,
the preparation beginning the previous fall, can be made to support my
cow, with the exception of the grain food and part of the roots. But
this requires more time for labor than I can give, and more manure than
one cow makes. I have had to buy fertilizers during the last two years,
and although they were good, I prefer hereafter to buy food and make
manure, rather than buy manures to make food. For one situated as I am, a
semi-soiling system, or limited pasturage helped out with other food, is
better, even if more food is bought. I can be surer of what I purchase,
and thus use the one cow to better advantage.
[Illustration: Fig. 5.—EAST END OF STABLE IN 1870.]
[Illustration: Fig. 6.—PLAN OF STABLE IN 1870.]
[Illustration: Fig. 7.—SOUTH SIDE OF STABLE AS ADAPTED FOR POULTRY IN
1871-5.]
[Illustration: Fig. 8.—PLAN OF STABLE, 1871-5.]
[Illustration: Figs. 9 and 10.—EAST AND SOUTH ELEVATIONS OF STABLE, AS
CHANGED FOR POULTRY AND COW IN 1875.]
[Illustration: Fig. 11.—MAIN FLOOR PLAN AS CHANGED FOR COW IN 1875.]
The only secret of home-made manure is to save everything, especially all
liquids, mix everything as already explained, fork over and keep compact,
to make a homogenous compost, and keep all under cover until used. A very
slight and cheap protecting shed will suffice.
[Illustration: Fig. 12.—FRONT ELEVATION AS CHANGED IN 1878.]
[Illustration: Fig. 13.—PLAN OF BARN BASEMENT WITH NEW STONE FOUNDATIONS,
1878.]
As to housing, I began with a plain frame stable found upon the
place, made originally for one horse and a buggy, and have gradually
changed and added to it, doing most of the work myself, until a very
satisfactory building has resulted. It contains room enough for a year’s
forage, including root-cellar, a warm, dry stall, conveniently arranged
for saving labor, ample shed-room for compost, and a sheltered yard
containing five or six square rods, which is as good as more. There is
running water in the yard. The plans accompanying this article, figs. 5
to 13 inclusive, show these arrangements better than any description in
writing.
“June” had her fifth calf September sixth, 1878, and her sixth exactly
a year later. At the fifth calving there was a “false presentation,”
and a very serious time. No competent veterinarian was within reach,
or else one would have been called. As it was, I looked up the subject
in back volumes of agricultural papers and other publications, went to
work myself, and getting the calf into proper position, succeeded in
effecting a delivery without serious consequences. Last September’s calf
was a heifer, and by a fine sire, so, as “June” has reached her prime, if
not passed it, I am raising this calf to make a new cow to succeed the
worthy dam. Most keepers of one cow, however, are so situated that they
had better dispose of calves at once. Making veal is not as profitable as
making butter, and feeding skim-milk to children and chickens.
In order to have the products of the cow perfectly satisfactory, I lay
great stress upon the utmost care and cleanliness in milking. First,
see that the stall and all about it is in order, pure air, and no dust
flying, and the udder and flank of the cow quite clean. Except in the
coldest weather, the udder is sponged off with tepid water, and wiped
dry, just before milking. Then I trust no one to milk for me, but do it
myself, quietly, quickly, and completely, milking into a funnel, which
carries the fluid to a covered pail, which serves also a seat. This new
and truly “Perfect” milking-pail, which I first saw described in the
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, is a great improvement on all open vessels. I
prefer not to have the cow eating while I milk; she should give her whole
attention to the operation, as well as the milker. This certainty that
my milk reaches the house absolutely pure, not only satisfies us as to
our own cream and butter, but makes “June’s” milk in great demand in the
neighborhood. Our neighbors so much prefer it to milkmen’s milk that they
are willing to send to the house for it, and pay more than the usual
village price. This adds materially to the profit of keeping one cow.
[Illustration: Fig. 14.—THE GUERNSEY COW “LADY JANE” AND HEIFER.]
JOSEPH EARNEST AND HIS COW “COMFORT.”
A STORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE.
BY S. B. MORRIS, CHARLESTOWN, PORTAGE CO., O.
The luxury of having fresh milk, cream, and butter, may be enjoyed by
every family in city, town, or hamlet, that can provide a cow with the
necessaries expressed in one word—comfort. To show what may be done
in this respect, allow me to give somewhat of the history of Joseph
Earnest. Joseph’s father was a carpenter, and never kept a horse or cow.
After giving his son the best education he could receive at the common
school, he kept him at work with himself until Joseph also became a
master carpenter. At the time our story commences, he is married and
has a family of three children, a girl of eight, a boy of six years,
and a baby. By industry, economy, and good habits, he had accumulated
sufficient means to purchase a half-acre lot in the outskirts of a
flourishing manufacturing town. Upon this lot he had built a small but
comfortable house. His wife, the daughter of a well-to-do farmer, having
a little property of her own, invested it in the vacant lot adjoining
them. The winter previous Joseph had put up a building which was to
serve the double purpose of barn and workshop. The barn for his visiting
friends, the workshop for himself. Back of this building, and adjacent to
it, was a small hennery in which were kept a few fowls; at one side was a
shed for his gardening implements. Everything about the premises showed
the owner was neat and orderly, as well as thrifty, while within the snug
cottage the same virtues reigned supreme. Many a time did Mary look back
to the old home-life on the farm, and think of the plentiful products of
the dairy. Then she would say to Joseph, “How I wish we could keep a cow.
It seems as though I cannot half cook with only one quart of milk a day,
and the children would be so much healthier if they could have what milk
they want.” Joseph agreed with her, and would add, “But you know Mary
we cannot raise our own vegetables and fruit, and keep a cow, with only
one acre of land.” Imagine her surprise, when, after a short absence one
morning, Joseph returned leading a cow. He was soon surrounded by his
family and plied with questions, such as: Whose is she? Where did you
get her? What will you do with her? In answer to these questions Joseph
replied, “I went over to Mr. Durham’s this morning, to see if he could
pay me what was back on the work I did for him last fall. I found him
feeding his cattle and made known my errand. He said he had no money at
present, but was wanting to sell a cow, and as soon as he could would pay
me. I asked him which cow he wanted to sell; he pointed out this one,
which was smaller than the others and seemed driven by them. Not a very
large cow, he said, but young, with some Jersey blood in her—better for
a family cow than for a factory cow. I say Earnest, she is just what you
need, with your family. But I’ve no place to put her, said I, and I don’t
know how to take care of a cow. Nonsense, said he, put her in your stable
for the present, and you’ll learn how to take care of her fast enough.
But what shall I feed her? Why the money you pay Churchill for milk,
with what you can raise on your lot, will keep your cow right along, and
instead of one quart a day, you’ll have all the milk and cream and butter
you want to use, and some to spare, and, Mary, I thought it wouldn’t
break us up if it didn’t prove a success, so I took the cow on what he
was owing me—twenty five dollars—and here she is.”
“Oh, Joseph, I am so glad you bought her, I do believe we can keep her,”
said Mary, “how gentle she seems,”—for during the talk the children
had been petting the cow, who appeared well pleased with her new
acquaintances. The baby partaking of the general animation, crowed with
delight, as though already anticipating the good time coming.
“She has behaved like a baby coming over here,” said Joseph, “and I
declare I begin to love her already. I have always wished we could live
where we could have animals around us, and perhaps we will some day.”
Mary said she hoped they could, for she felt lonesome for them. “But what
shall we name our cow? For my part I would like to call her ‘Comfort,’
and while she contributes to our comfort we will endeavor to do the same
for her.” Joseph agreed to the name, saying he needed plenty to eat and
drink, a good bed and pleasant home, and he believed that animals did
too, so he would give her one of his nice roomy stalls in his barn, make
her a bed of shavings from the shop until he could do better. “We have
pure water for her to drink, with hay and vegetables to eat, and that
will keep her alive until we learn what she will thrive on best.” As this
was a “broken” day, he thought they had better get neighbor Manning’s
horse and carry-all, and drive out to father Granger’s. He had always
been a good farmer and could tell him just how to care for the cow. All
were delighted with this plan and were soon enjoying a six-mile drive
into the country.
He learned that a cow would eat almost anything that grows, but that
judgment and experience was needed in feeding to produce the best
results. Father Granger said they could keep a cow as well as not, and
better too, and Joseph began to believe it. At the suggestion of father
G. he borrowed a bag, and on his way home stopped at the grist mill and
had it filled with bran, which the old gentleman said was about the best
feed for a cow just before coming in. After arriving home “Comfort”
received a feed of hay and a quart of bran—had a drink of fresh water,
her stable cleaned, some fresh shavings given her for a bedding, and
with kind pats and words was left for the night. In the evening bedding
was talked over. Joseph thought he would get the privilege of gathering
leaves from a wood lot about one half mile distant, but Mary thought
they would be too wet at this season, then sawdust was suggested, but
that was not quite the thing they concluded, that is, if they could
think of anything better. To be perfect it must be comfortable for the
cow to stand or lie upon, it must be an absorbent of liquid manure, and
something that would add to the value of the compost heap, and would
easily decompose. Suddenly Joseph exclaimed, “I have it, just the thing.
You remember I went out to N. last fall to do a job of work for Charlie
Curtiss’s brother, and when he came to bring me home, with my tools, he
put a large top box on his wagon box, and also put in a number of sacks.
I asked him what he was going to bring home and he said ‘oat shucks’ to
bed his cows with—that the shucks were dry and bulky, and for fifty cents
you could get all you could draw at a load. He said it was the best and
cheapest bedding he could get, and much more than paid for itself in the
value of the manure. That is just what we want, and I will get Charlie to
draw me a load to-morrow.” So the next night “Comfort” laid down for the
first time in her life on a “first-class” bed of oat shucks, while the
adjoining stall was filled full for future use.
“Joseph, what are you going to do with that lumber Charlie left here
to-day?” said Mary, a few evenings later. “Well I have been thinking
‘Comfort’ ought to have a little yard where she can walk around and enjoy
the sunshine and fresh air. I am going to build a fence from the farther
corner of the hennery to the fence on the back side of the lot, and one
from the corner of the shed back, and that will make her a good yard.
Those two English cherry trees will come in it and furnish shade for her
in the hottest weather.”
Another evening, as Joseph came home from work, Mary asked, “What in the
world are you going to do with these,” as she drew from the bundle a card
and brush. “Which of the family are you going to use these on?”—“Oh, I
thought they would be good things to have in the house,” said Joseph,
laughing. “You know I started out early this morning to go around by
Mason’s, to see about repairing his house this next summer. He is one
of the best of farmers, all his stock look thrifty—everything is up in
order, and he makes farming pay. I found him in the stable carding and
brushing his cows. That was a new idea to me, and I asked him if he
thought it really paid him to spend so much time and labor on his cows.
Well, said he, I’ve had the care of cattle nigh on to thirty years, and I
think my carding and brushing pay as well as anything I can do, and there
is nothing an animal enjoys more than having its coat combed.”
“What did Mr. Mason say about the work.”—“He is going to have his house
thoroughly repaired, and I am glad to say your husband has the job, and
he is going to keep his eyes and ears open and learn what he can about
farming.”
Joseph had bought a load of fine hay a farmer was taking into town to
market, and “Comfort” was now fed hay three times a day, with two quarts
of bran night and morning. At noon there was something from the house
also, like potato and apple peelings, small potatoes, wilted turnips or
beets, cut up cabbage leaves, etc. The children thought it nice fun to
feed her at noon. Some loose bars had been put up to her stall which
was quite roomy, and she did not have to be driven into it by some of
the men and all of the boys in the neighborhood, but when the gate of
the yard was opened she walked briskly to her stall, knowing she would
find a good supper waiting for her. Humane care, the plenty of food and
drink, given regularly, have wrought in a month’s time a great change
in the appearance of “Comfort.” From being a poorly fed “whipped” cow
in a dairy, suffering all the discomfort of stanchions for eighteen out
of twenty-four hours, with no bed but a bare floor—she has come to be a
thrifty, happy animal, giving good promise of rewarding her owners well
for their care. One morning the first week in April, Joseph came in from
the barn looking pleased, but a little anxious. “Children,” he said,
“what do you think I found at the barn this morning?”—“Oh, a bossy,” they
said, delighted with the idea.—“Yes, ‘Comfort’ has a little ‘comfort,’
and she is very proud of it; but now comes the rub, who is to milk, and
what is to be done with the calf?”—“Oh,” said Mary, “I guess I have not
quite forgotten how to milk yet, and you can soon learn—‘never too old
to learn,’ you know. I will go out after breakfast and milk out what the
calf does not take, and you can go around by Mr. Mason’s and ask him what
we had better do with the calf.” Joseph felt these were good suggestions,
and after standing by Mary, in more than one sense, while she performed
her part of the programme—which was successfully accomplished—he started
for work by way of farmer Mason’s. Arriving there he made known his
errand. “Well,” said Mr. M., “you can ‘deacon’ it or veal it. Don’t
many but dairymen follow the first way, and I should advise you to let
it have all the milk it wants for four or five weeks, and the butcher
will take it and pay you five or six dollars. Put the calf by itself,
and night and morning let it go to the cow and get its own milk.” When
Joseph arrived home that evening, he partitioned off a corner of the
barn with some barrels and boxes, put in some bedding, and put the calf
in his new quarters. Then he tried his hand at milking, Mary standing
by him this time, telling him what to do, and laughing a little at his
awkward efforts, yet encouraging him by saying he did splendidly for the
first trial. “Comfort” rewarded him for his kindness to her, by being
very patient with his awkwardness, and he daily improved in the art of
milking, so that while vealy was getting his fill, he would get about two
or three quarts as his share.
The latter part of April Joseph commenced work for Mr. Mason, and as his
work-bench was at one end of the barn floor, he had a good opportunity
for observation. He noticed Mr. M. fed his cows corn meal, and asked
him what feed he considered best for cows giving milk at this time of
the year. Mr. M. said, in his experience he had found there were three
things to be considered in the care of cows. Health of the cow, quantity
and quality of the milk. Plenty of wholesome food and pure water (also a
little salt each day), given regularly, out of door exercise in pleasant
weather, and general good care will give the first. “Clover hay, corn
fodder, wheat bran or ground oats, with some roots, will keep up the flow
of milk,” said he, “but if you want thick cream, and plenty of golden
butter, feed your cow corn meal. When my cows are in milk and kept on dry
feed, I give each cow daily, morning and evening, four quarts of mixed
feed, one part, by weight, of wheat bran and two parts of corn meal, with
about one tablespoonful of salt. We make more and better butter on this
feed than when the cows have grass only.”
Joseph, having no experience of his own, was glad to use that of others
in regard to his cow, so from this time he began feeding “Comfort” corn
meal, beginning with a pint and increasing gradually to one quart;
the result being plainly seen in the improved quality of the milk and
condition of the calf. When this was five weeks old the butcher took it
away giving five dollars for it, and seemed much pleased with his bargain.
That evening Joseph figured a little. He found his bran and corn meal had
cost three dollars and fifty-five cents, so there was a balance of one
dollar and forty-five cents from the calf to pay on the hay. They had
had from three to four quarts of milk per day, of better quality than
that they could have bought for six cents a quart. Thirty days, three and
one-half quarts a day, at six cents a quart, is six dollars and thirty
cents. By stabling and bedding the cow, quite a quantity of good manure
had accumulated, and Joseph felt very well satisfied, so far, with his
experiment, and most of all for the luxury of having good sweet milk for
the family use. It was now the middle of May, grass was well started,
and as there were farms near them, it was thought best to hire pasture
for the summer. By inquiry they found she could be pastured one-fourth
mile from home. This seemed too far to carry the milk, and would take too
much time to drive back and forth twice a day. “Why not keep her at home
nights, and feed her something as we do now,” said Mary; “she will be
glad to come home then. Father always feeds his cows bran in the summer;
he says it pays in their ‘coming up’ if in nothing else. He goes to the
gate and calls ‘come boss,’ and they all start as quickly as if he had
said, ‘come to supper,’ and it is that to them.” So it was decided to
keep “Comfort” home nights. In a few days “Comfort” was introduced to her
summer range, and quickly learned the way to and from the pasture, and
the children thought it a great pleasure to drive her to and fro.
“Joseph,” said Mary, about this time, “what shall we do with the sour
milk? The neighbors will take some of it at two cents a quart, but the
demand is irregular, and it don’t seem right to throw it away. Don’t you
think we better get a pig?”—“Perhaps so; as we are in for experiments
this year we might try that also. Mason has some nice pigs—two kinds. One
kind make large growthy animals, the other kind are smaller but finer,
and would be best for us, I think.” Soon a pig was added to their farm
stock. Joseph declared he would not try to live without a cow again if
it cost twice as much to take care of her. “Why we didn’t know what good
living was until ‘Comfort’ came to live with us, did we, children?”—“No,
indeed, only when we went to grand-pa’s.”—“Look at this baby,” said Mary,
“she never was so well before, and she is getting as rosy and round as
a Maidenblush apple. You can’t think what a help the milk is to me in
cooking. I can always have something fresh and nice now, and it will
lessen our meat bill too.”
Some of the neighbors wanted to buy milk; “Comfort” was giving sixteen
quarts a day. So four neighboring families were supplied each with one
quart of milk a day, and after a week’s trial Mary reported she had made
five pounds of butter that was worth twenty cents per pound, grocery
price. They had sold twenty-eight quarts of milk at six cents a quart,
butter and milk amounting to two dollars and sixty-eight cents, and
they had used all the sweet milk, cream, sour milk and butter-milk they
needed, and the pig had been kept on the surplus of the last two. Joseph
was now feeding “Comfort” as Mr. Mason advised, with corn meal and bran,
two-thirds of the former and one-third of the latter by weight, giving
three quarts of the mixture night and morning. Corn meal cost one cent
per pound, bran cost two-thirds of a cent a pound, the cost of the feed
per day being a fraction over seven cents. He also gave her a little
hay—to the value of say ten cents a week—pasture cost twenty-five cents
a week, so the expense of her keeping was eighty-five cents a week,
the work offsetting the milk used, left a profit of one dollar and
eighty-three cents. There was another item not to be overlooked. The
manure that was accumulating, the value of which was largely increased
by the ground feed given the cow, and the oat shuck bedding. Of the acre
of land about one-quarter was occupied with buildings, walks, shrubbery,
a small lawn in front, and flower garden at the side of the house, but
every foot of intervening space was well seeded to grass, so it really
made quite a little mowing. Another quarter had been set out to fruit
trees five years, and was now well stocked with red clover, the remaining
one-half acre had been used as a garden and potato patch. With the
exception of a few loads of manure, obtained at different places, no
fertilizer had been used on this acre of land. But now having gone into
the stock business, Joseph began to read and think about such things. He
frequently brought home an agricultural paper from Mr. Mason’s to read in
the evening, and began also to feel he must have one of his own. He found
considerable in the papers about commercial fertilizers, so he asked Mr.
Mason if he had ever used any of them. He said he had experimented with
them considerably, and thought them excellent helps. “I have never,”
said he, “paid out money for anything that came back as quickly with as
good profit, as superphosphates. These and other fertilizers must be used
with judgment to get the best returns, but on gravelly soil, with a clay
subsoil like ours here, it pays well.” Joseph also asked Mr. M. what he
could raise on his lot to the best advantage for his cow. “I should say
sowed corn and mangel wurzels. You see this little lot at the back of the
barn, it is ten square rods, and very rich ground.
CORN FODDER.
“I sow this to corn in drills about this time (the last of May), so that
it gets well tasseled by the time pastures begin to get rather dry, as
they usually do after the middle of summer, then I begin to feed, and
it helps keep up the flow of milk amazingly. It is a sweet, juicy and
nutritious feed, just the thing for cows. Let me calculate a little. Why
Earnest, if your land could be made to produce like this piece, you can
raise coarse fodder enough for your cow for six months, on thirty square
rods of ground. I like some roots for cows—we like a variety of food, so
do animals. The best roots I know of to raise for stock are sugar beets
or the mangels.”
Very soon after this conversation Joseph had his half acre of land plowed
deep and in narrow furrows, as he had seen recommended in agricultural
papers. The manure that had accumulated from the cow was used for a
top-dressing for one half of the plowed portion. This was well harrowed,
and three-fourths of it lightly furrowed with the plow, two and one half
feet apart. The remaining one-fourth was turned into ridges as close as
the furrows could be turned together. His team work was now done for the
present on this part of his lot especially set apart for his cow. (The
other half of the plowed lot was to be used for his main family garden,
he having spaded up some beds for early vegetables.) He had provided
himself with seed corn from farmer Mason’s, some mangel wurzel seed from
the seed store, and also a bag of two hundred pounds of phosphate, of
a brand recommended by Mr. M. The phosphate was sprinkled in the plow
marks, at the rate of three hundred pounds to the acre, as near as could
be judged, the soil in the bottom of the furrow was lightly stirred
with a four pronged potato hook, the corn was sprinkled in, about eight
kernels to the foot [sixteen to twenty is better—Ed.,] and covered about
two inches deep. One half of the piece designed for corn was planted, and
the other half left to be treated in the same way some two weeks later.
The top was raked off the ridges designed for the mangels. A furrow was
made on each with a hand hoe, and phosphate sprinkled in rather more
liberally than for the corn. This was thoroughly mixed with the soil, the
furrow becoming nearly level with the surface. A line was drawn by which
a light mark was made with the end of the hoe handle, in which the mangel
seeds were sown and covered about one inch deep, the soil being pressed
down lightly with the hoe. After saving enough phosphate for the balance
of the corn, and a little to experiment with on some late potatoes, the
remainder was sown broadcast on the clover. It fell a little short of
covering the whole, and Joseph thought that would make a good opportunity
to test its virtues. His seeds came up well, and, as he had all he could
attend to nights and mornings, he hired a neighbor to do his farm work,
and he determined no weeds should have the benefit of his fertilizers or
soil; and this part of his programme was thoroughly carried out during
the growing season.
SUMMER QUARTERS.
In “Comfort’s” yard was a corner formed by the barn on one side, the
hennery on another, and the board fence on a third side. Joseph put
a roof over this corner, and about a foot deep of oatshucks on the
ground, and fastened a box to the side of the barn for her to eat out
of; and here were her summer quarters. Every morning before milking the
droppings were cleaned up and piled in one corner of the yard. As soon
as the clover began to blossom, an armful was cut each evening and fed
to “Comfort” after her ration of dry feed, and the morning feed was
discontinued. After the corn was large enough, that took the place of
clover until frost threatened; then it was cut up and bound in small
bundles, which were set up in large stooks, to cure for winter use.
No difference was observed in the first crop of clover in favor of the
phosphate, but the second cutting was largely benefited by its use. Over
one-half of the first and second cuttings were cured and stored in the
barn, with all of the grass around the yard, which, with fully two-thirds
of the stalks, would be nearly, if not quite enough coarse feed to last
“Comfort” through the winter. The mangels yielded about twenty-five
bushels, not a very large yield, but quite satisfactory, considering the
soil had not really been farmed but one year. The roots were pitted near
the barn for spring use. Some of the corn stalks were set so as to form
a slanting roof over them; three or four inches of dirt thrown over
this; afterwards enough to keep them from freezing.
About the first of November, “Comfort” was established in winter quarters
in the stall, at night and during stormy days, and in the yard on
pleasant days. She continued in milk until the middle of February, and
was in fresh milk March eighteenth, was hearty and contented—a comfort
to look at as well as to own. Joseph Earnest was well pleased with his
year’s experiment.
CONCLUSIONS.
It is now three years since he brought comfort to his home in more ways
than one. His little farm is improving every year in fertility and value,
and even now blossoms like a thing of beauty. Some of his neighbors have
followed his example, for he tells them:
“Any one who has a place to put a cow can keep one with profit, if he
will make her comfortable; that it matters not whether protection from
the weather is secured by logs, straw, sods, rough boards, or planed
boards well painted. She must have exercise, sunshine, and fresh air.
These can be obtained in a small dry yard, kept clean, as well as in
‘Uncle Sam’s’ pasture, the open prairie. She must have something of a
variety of wholesome food, and a plentiful supply of pure water. No
domestic animal, in proportion to its weight, needs as much water as a
milch cow. She must be kept clean by litter, card, and brush. If these
rules are observed with judgment and kindness, very seldom will any help
be needed at time of calving. If anything goes wrong there is no better
rule than to use one’s common sense, taking the advice of experienced
neighbors.
“To economize manure, an abundance of good litter should be used, and
the compost heap kept under cover, if possible; at any rate, not under
the eaves of the barn. If, with this home-made manure, your land does
not produce all it can, and you wish to buy some fertilizing material,
your first choice should be good stable manure; if you cannot get that
reasonably, use some reliable brand of commercial fertilizer. Have your
cow ‘come in’ when it will be most for your profit or convenience,
avoiding hot weather. The calf may be killed when one to three days old,
saving its hide and rennet; it may be kept until five or six weeks old,
fed on new milk, and ‘vealed,’ or sold for that purpose, or it may be
raised on skim-milk (after it is three or four weeks old), and sold in
the fall to some farmer.
“Milking should be done gently but quickly, as near twelve hours apart
as possible. Milk clean but do not “strip;” use the whole hand, and not
the thumb and finger only; sing or whistle, if you want to while milking;
if you are good friends with your cow, she will enjoy it.
“Since the first year I have not bought any coarse feed, and only a
little fertilizer for grass and clover, the cow and pig furnishing all
that is needed for the plowed ground, and this last year I have a surplus
of feed. I tell you, friends, my cow is the best savings bank I ever
knew.”
This and much more said Joseph Earnest to his neighbors.
A GOOD STABLE “TIE.”
Mr. D. C. Kenyon, of Carbondale, Pa., describes a convenient home-made
Stable Tie as follows: Our tie, of which we send you a miniature sample,
is made of three-eighths inch rope, which is braided into an iron ring
sliding freely up and down a post set close to the manger or feed-box.
There is a knot or frog on one end, and a loop on the other. The ends
pass on each side of the cow’s neck, and the knot is slipped through the
loop which may be made tighter by twisting. Similar fastenings made of
chains with snap hooks may be bought at the hardware stores, but such an
one as is here described will last a long time and answer every purpose.
[Illustration: Fig. 15.]
JERUSALEM ARTICHOKES AS COW-FEED.
BY CHRISTOPHER SHEARER, TUCKERTON, PA.
Butter and milk are not only luxuries, but in many families they are
indispensable necessaries of life. In this article my principal purpose
is to show how a cow can be kept with the greatest economy of land and
labor. I consider these the essential points in the discussion. Where hay
is dear and pasture scarce, a man who lives by the labor of his hands,
cannot ordinarily afford to purchase the necessary food for a cow; and
if he has only an acre or two of land at his disposal, he finds it more
profitable to raise other products. Ordinarily it requires the yield
of several acres of land to support a cow. But I propose to show that
this can be done on less than one acre, by raising the proper crops,
and treating the soil to the best advantage. A cow of ordinary size
will consume about eleven thousand pounds of hay, or its equivalent,
in a year. The equivalent of this amount of hay is—in potatoes, thirty
thousand eight hundred pounds, or five hundred and thirteen bushels,
and in Indian corn, seven thousand seven hundred pounds, or one hundred
and thirty-seven bushels. These quantities cannot be raised on one
acre, and if we examine the tables of equivalents of food, we find that
most of the grasses, grains, and roots, are objectionable on account of
unproductiveness, want of sufficient nutritive qualities, or of the labor
that the cultivation of them requires.
VALUE OF ARTICHOKES.
There is, however, a root, or tuber, an acre of which affords enough
nourishment to sustain two cows, with less labor than is employed in
raising an acre of potatoes—and that root is the Jerusalem Artichoke
(_Helianthus tuberosus_). We can depend upon an average yield of from
one thousand to one thousand two hundred bushels of these tubers from
an acre of land rich enough to produce fifty bushels of corn. Pound for
pound they are equal in nutritive qualities to potatoes. One cow can
therefore be subsisted a year on five hundred or six hundred bushels of
the tubers, a quantity that can be raised on half an acre of land. But
since these roots do not keep over summer, and as the cow will not thrive
on them alone, it is necessary to supplement them with dry fodder during
winter, and to subsist her on other forage during summer. With the aid
of this plant, three-quarters of an acre of land under high cultivation,
will nourish a cow during the whole year, and the soil will become rich
without any other manure than that derived from the cow. This can be done
with little expense, and with no more labor than is involved in ordinary
farm culture. It is necessary to begin operations on the farm in most
sections of the Middle States, a little earlier than the first of May.
A cow can be subsisted to the best advantage on a small patch of land,
by feeding her Jerusalem Artichokes and a little hay or other dry fodder
through the winter and part of spring, and soiling her with green rye,
clover, and green-corn fodder, the rest of the year. Three-quarters of an
acre will, under judicious treatment, yield enough of these products to
maintain a cow during the year. If the soil be not in good condition to
begin with, that quantity of land may, for a year or two, be insufficient
for the purpose, and it will then be necessary to supply the deficiency
from other sources; but by proper management the land will, in a few
years, be converted into a garden that will afford abundant nourishment
for the cow, without pasture or outside aid either in food or manure.
Suppose that a man owns a cow of medium size, or a little larger, that
he has three-quarters of an acre of land, that one-third of it, namely,
one-quarter of an acre, is in clover, that the remainder is ready for the
plow, and that it is early spring-time of the year, he should go to work
at once and manure the land liberally, for he will be well repaid for
the expense, in the superior productiveness of the soil. All the land,
excepting the clover, should be plowed, and one-sixth of the land, that
is one-eighth of an acre, should be sowed with oats, with about one-half
bushel of seed. One quart of clover seed, and one pint of timothy seed
should be sown on the oats. The oats are raised only during the first
year, rye being substituted in after years, and the timothy is added for
the purpose of increasing the hay-crop in the second year. One-third
of the land (one-quarter of an acre) should be planted in Jerusalem
Artichokes, early in the season. This root should be planted in hills,
three feet apart each way, and cultivated flat, both ways. As the land
increases in fertility in future years, the hills may be set a little
farther apart. The patch should be stirred two or three times with the
cultivator while the plants are young, and afterwards kept clear of weeds
with the hoe. The weeds require but little attention after the plant has
attained a fair growth. One tuber, or piece of tuber, of about the size
of a hen’s egg, is sufficient for a hill, the seed being covered to the
depth of two or three inches with earth.
As soon as the season is far enough advanced, one-sixth of the plot
(one-eighth of an acre) should be planted in sweet corn. One half of the
corn should be set out very early, and the rest about four weeks later,
so as to extend its growth, and consequently its availability as green
fodder, over a longer period. The furrows should be three feet apart, and
the corn planted in drills, [sixteen to twenty kernels to the foot—ED.]
Afterwards the corn should be cultivated two or three times, and kept
clear of weeds. When the corn fodder is all disposed of, the corn patch
should be plowed, and seeded with about a peck of rye, and a pint of
timothy seed, and in the following spring a quart of clover seed should
be sown upon the rye. These crops will give the land a complete rotation
every six years. The following diagram indicates the proper succession
of the crops and shows the plot of land divided into six equal parts,
containing one-eighth of an acre each:
[Illustration]
Clover occupies two parts, rye one part, and Jerusalem Artichokes two
parts every year. Clover follows rye; rye follows corn; corn follows
artichokes; and artichokes follow clover. Every year one-half of the
clover, namely, the two-year-old clover patch, is plowed, and planted in
artichokes. The latter must be planted anew, and not be allowed to grow
as a “volunteer crop,” but must be regularly cultivated, and all the
plants that come up between the hills destroyed.
The manure derived from the cow during the winter, should be spread in
spring on the land intended for corn and artichokes, and plowed down,
and that made in summer should be applied to the rye and clover patches
in fall. Ashes and a moderate quantity of lime, spread on the clover
patch early in spring, will be beneficial, and a peck of gypsum scattered
on the young and growing clover, will answer an excellent purpose as a
healthy stimulant of its growth.
[Illustration: Fig. 16.—SWISS COW “GENEVA.”]
The spring time of the first year must be tided over with hay until the
clover is large enough for soiling. Green clover is then fed to the cow
until the oats are sufficiently advanced. The oats are then used as long
as they are fit for the purpose, cutting them a second time as far as
practicable, and the residue, if any, is cured for hay before it gets too
ripe for that purpose. The same course is pursued with the rye in the
following years. The clover should be cut for hay rather early, in order
to get it in the best possible condition, and to insure a good second,
and perhaps a third crop. All the aftermath not used in soiling, should
be converted into hay. When the oats are exhausted, clover is fed until
the corn fodder is large enough for use. This is fed until the ears make
their appearance, and what is then left is cut and cured for dry fodder
during winter. After the green corn fodder is all consumed, there will be
a growth of new clover in the oats stubble the first year, and in the rye
stubble in after years, with which the cow is soiled until the artichokes
are ready to feed, and if any of the new clover is left by that time, it
is made into hay. The artichokes are fed raw; in winter, with hay and
other dry fodder, and as long as they last in spring.
In the second year soiling begins with rye, and continues afterwards
through the season the same as the first year, and a like course is
followed in succeeding years.
FEEDING ARTICHOKES.
The artichokes will grow until frost kills the stalks, and a patch of
one-quarter of an acre, when the soil is in good condition, will yield a
yearly average of between two hundred and fifty and three hundred bushels
of them. They can be fed before they are quite ripe, in which case the
cow will eat up the whole plant—root, stalk, and branch. She must not
have access to a heap of the tubers, lest she surfeit and seriously
injure herself. As long as the whole plant is fed, she should not be
allowed more at a time than she will eat up clean, for if she gets more
she will eat the tubers, and refuse the stalks. In fact she will prefer
these tubers at all times to any other food. She should therefore receive
a certain allowance, say a peck or a little more, three times a day, so
that she will eat up the stalks, and also a small portion of other forage
with them. In winter and spring she will consume a bushel or more of the
raw tubers a day, together with eight or ten pounds of hay or other dry
food. Her ration of artichokes should never be so large that she will
reject other food.
Artichokes can be fed for about eight months of the year, say from the
first of October to the first of June, during which time the cow will
consume two hundred and forty bushels, or more, of them. These, with
the hay and other dry fodder, will keep her in excellent condition, and
produce an abundance of good milk without additional food. One ton of
hay or other dry fodder, in connection with the artichokes, will last
during the said eight months, affording the cow eight or nine pounds a
day. Three quarters of a ton may suffice, but she should not have less
than this. If the crop of hay and other dry fodder exceeds a ton, it may
all be fed during the first year, or a part of it may be kept over for
the ensuing year. In stowing away the hay, ten or twelve quarts of salt
should be scattered through a ton of it, to impart a relish. In addition
to this, the cow should receive two or three ounces of salt daily, and
plenty of pure fresh water.
HARVESTING ARTICHOKES.
The artichokes should remain in the ground in autumn as long as the
weather permits, and be fed out of the field during that time, and just
before the earth is permanently frost-bound, enough of them should be
dug up to last over winter; and, since frost does not injure them, the
rest should be left in the ground until the following spring. A good way
to keep them in winter, is to place them on the ground in the field in
shallow layers, covering them lightly with the stalks of the artichoke,
or with straw, and then with a little earth. If the rain wets them it
will not injure them. It is advisable always to keep a considerable
quantity of them in the stable or cellar for convenience of feeding. In
the ensuing spring, they are again fed out of the field until it is time
to plow the land, when all the tubers not yet disposed of, are taken up
and kept in the cellar or stable.
THE STALKS
of the Jerusalem Artichoke furnish excellent material for litter for the
cow. They grow to a hight of from eight to ten feet, are composed almost
entirely of pith, and are so fragile that they can easily be broken into
fragments. As many of them should be stowed in the stable as it will
contain, and the rest, if any, should be stacked outside. Before bedding
the cow with them, it is advisable to crush them with a mallet on a block
prepared for the purpose. This labor will require but a few minutes daily
to provide sufficient litter, and will make a comfortable bed for the
cow, absorbing and retaining the liquid manure. The stalks cannot be used
for fodder after being frost-killed.
If the food of the cow should at any time run short the deficiency must
be supplied, for it will not do to stint her, and if it is ever found
necessary to change or modify her diet, it should be done.
I have allowed three-quarters of an acre for the sustenance of the cow,
and this will be sufficient, but only on condition that the land is in
good heart. If the land is poor at the start, it will be safer to begin
with more, and afterwards to reduce the quantity to three-quarters of
an acre, as the soil increases in fertility. The value of clover as a
renovator of the soil is well known, but the Jerusalem Artichoke is
equally efficacious, if fed on the farm, for it attracts its nitrogen to
a great extent from the atmosphere. The dairy-farm now under discussion
possesses all the advantages that can be derived from these plants as
fertilizers, and as the other crops raised on it do not injuriously
exhaust the soil, being cut before they produce their seed, the land will
improve indefinitely in fertility.
THE CALF AND THE CARE OF IT.
Since the plants here recommended for the nourishment of the cow, afford
the best milk-producing food the whole year round, the time of calving
may be left to the option of the owner, for it will not affect the
quantity of milk that the cow gives. If the milk is mostly needed in
summer, the cow should calve in spring, and if it be desirable to have
more milk in winter, she should calve in autumn. I might add, that if the
butter, or a part of it, is to be sold, it will be more profitable to
have the calf in fall than in any other season, because butter brings the
highest prices in winter.
The disposal of the calf depends on circumstances, of which the owner is
the best judge. If he concludes to keep it on account of the value of the
breed, or for any other reason, he should raise it by hand, not allowing
it to suck more than three days at furthest. For the first few days it
should receive only the fresh milk of the cow; afterwards it may be fed
on warm fresh milk, skim-milk, buttermilk, whey, and hay-tea, until it
is old enough to subsist on solid food. Fresh milk should be the leading
diet in the beginning, and should be gradually diminished in quantity as
the calf increases in strength. Hay-tea is made by pouring boiling water
on hay, and letting it steep for about two hours. If the calf is not to
be raised, it ought to be sold before it is a week old, because the milk
that it drinks before it is ready for the shambles, is worth more than
the price it will bring. If a purchaser for the calf cannot be found
while it is so young, it is most profitable to kill it, and bury it in
the compost heap, as soon as the milk of the cow is fit to use. I simply
state this as a fact, without recommending it to be done, for it is cruel
work; but so is any butchering, and if the calf is to be killed, it
really matters not how soon it is done. The sooner it is removed from the
cow the less she will grieve for its loss.
CALVING.
The cow should be milked as long as her milk is good, or until she runs
dry, which may in some cases be six or eight weeks of calving (in others
not at all.) Her rations should be curtailed a little for a short time
before that period, in order to carry her safely through the crisis.
After she has the calf, she may receive warm bran-mashes for a day or
two, containing a little of her own milk, and should not be fully fed for
the first few days. This treatment is all that is required before and
after the period of calving. The cow will generally pass through this
event in safety, without assistance. Should there, however, be a false
presentation, or other difficulty of parturition, the best thing the
owner can do, if he has no experience in the matter, is to call to his
aid a veterinary surgeon, or a neighbor who knows what course to pursue
in such cases.
As long as the cow is fresh, and yields a large flow of milk, she should
be milked three times a day, early in the morning, at noon, and late
in the evening; afterwards two milkings daily, will be sufficient. She
should be fed, watered, milked, carded, and led out of and into the
stable, at the same hours every day. She should not be beaten, or pelted,
or harshly spoken to or dealt with in any manner. Kind and considerate
treatment inspires her with confidence and contentment, makes her the
pet and delight of the household, and is rewarded by an abundance of
wholesome milk. But there are many matters of detail in keeping a cow,
which it is impossible to notice in a limited essay like this. If the
owner desires to be fully informed on the subject, he will do well to
purchase a few books that treat upon the subject.
The stable for the cow should be warm, dry, well ventilated, and large
enough to contain two or three tons of hay and litter, together with
other material to be described hereafter, besides a stall for the cow,
and room for the calf. If the owner of the cow has a stable that fulfils
these requirements, it will answer his purpose if he makes a proper stall
in it. If he has no stable, and cannot afford the expense of building a
good one, he must at least have a proper stall to save the manure of the
cow, and to shelter her from the inclemency of the weather. A stable that
will fully answer this purpose, should be at least fourteen feet square,
and about twelve feet high to the eaves, and should have a loft for
storing hay. The annexed figures represent such a structure in outline:
[Illustration: Fig. 17.]
[Illustration: Fig. 18.]
Figure 17 is a ground plan, and shows that the lower story is divided
into two parts, _S_, representing the stall, and _R_, all the remaining
portion below. The stall is ten feet long, and should be five, or nearly
five feet wide; _M_, represents the manger, which is about two feet deep,
eighteen inches wide, and in length equal to the width of the stall. The
cow is tied to the manger with a halter or chain; _T_, is a trough in the
manger for feeding roots, salt, etc., and is about one foot wide, eight
inches deep, and in length equal to the width of the manger. The floor
of the stall should slope a little to the rear, and must be water-tight,
so as to conduct the urine of the cow into the brine-pit, _B_. The floor
may be composed of cement, or of two-inch plank closely fitted together.
The brine-pit, _B_, consists of a water-tight box made of plank, and
should be about one foot wide, six inches deep, and in length equal to
the width of the stall. This pit is sunk into the ground so that its top
is on a level with the floor, in order that it may receive all the liquid
discharges of the cow that are not absorbed by the litter. If the floor
is laid in cement the pit may be made of the same material. The object
of the brine-pit is to save the liquid manure; to accomplish which the
latter must be retained by some absorbent. Dry earth is used for this
purpose. At first the bottom of the pit is covered with dry earth, and
as soon as this is moist, more earth is added until the pit is full of
the saturated substance, when the latter is thrown upon the compost heap,
and the same process repeated. A door is placed at _e_, for admitting the
cow, and carrying away the manure. The partition between _S_ and _R_ may
be made of boards or rails, and need not be over four feet high.
The division, _R_, is used for keeping litter, dry earth, artichoke
roots, green fodder, and the calf. It should have a door at some
convenient place for entrance from the outside, and a window with a
glass-frame, preferably on the south side. It is in communication with
the stall by means of a gate at _d_.
Figure 18 is a view of the gable-end, _L_, representing the loft for
storing hay and other dry fodder. The loft has a shutter in one of the
gable-ends or sides, and a ladder or steps running up to it from within,
for convenience of feeding. _P_, is a post in the corner of the manger.
The other letters in figure 18 indicate the same parts as in figure 17.
The cow-yard will be large enough if it contains an area of two square
rods; but it can be made somewhat larger with advantage. It ought to
adjoin the stable so as to give the cow direct access to the stall; and
ought to be shaded by trees in order to afford shelter to the cow from
the direct rays of the sun in summer. The cow should be kept in the
yard only a part of the day, and the rest of the time she should be in
the stall. The stall-door should be left open when she is in the yard,
so that she can enter the stable at will. Some manure will be lost by
suffering her to run in the yard; but the benefit that she will derive
from it, in health and contentment, will more than compensate for the
loss.
MAKING AND SAVING MANURE.
The compost heap may be kept in the cow-yard, and must be in the shade.
It should, therefore, be placed on the north side of the stable, and
trees should be planted east and west of it. It must not be under cover
nor washed by running water, nor receive the water from the roof of the
stable; but the rain should fall on it directly from the skies to promote
decomposition, and to prevent the escape of its volatile constituents.
The manure of the stall, and the saturated earth of the brine pit, are
mixed together to form the compost heap, and all the refuse material of
the farm, garden, and yard, should be thrown on it. It ought to be kept
in a compact body, level on top, and protected by boards on the sides to
prevent it from spreading. No ashes or lime should ever be applied to it.
Regarding the material for absorbing the liquid excretions of the cow,
nothing better can be found than prepared muck; but as this is seldom
obtainable, the scrapings of the streets of a city, or even of a public
road, may be used instead. If these cannot be had, the surface soil of
the dairy farm answer the purpose. Whatever substance is employed must be
thoroughly dried. The middle of summer is the proper time to prepare it.
About four cart loads of it, as dry as they can be made, should be kept
in the stable, or in some other place where it is not liable to attract
moisture; and that amount will last the year round.
CONCLUSIONS ABOUT ARTICHOKES.
I have now given my instructions for keeping a cow, and it is evident
from what I have written, that the Jerusalem Artichoke is my main
dependence for her support. The other points that I have touched upon,
are of minor importance, when compared with the value that I have
attached to this plant. My own experience with the plant satisfies me
that I have not overstated its merits. On rich land a single stalk will
produce from a peck to half a bushel of the tubers. Last year was an
exceptionably unfavorable one in this locality, on account of drouth in
summer and fall; and yet the artichokes that I planted between the trees
in my peach orchard yielded abundantly. I have fattened cattle on them
without any additional food excepting a little hay, until they were fit
for the butcher; and my horses thrive on them when fed in connection with
hay, doing full work without grain. A brother of mine planted artichokes
in a field that had been in cultivation for more than a century, and yet
in spite of the drouth, of indifferent culture without manure, and of an
early frost that prematurely killed the plants, the yield amounted to
between five hundred and six hundred bushels to the acre.
RURAL ECONOMY.
Boussingault in his “Rural Economy,” pp. 159-160 says: “The Jerusalem
Artichoke rises to a hight of from nine to ten feet; it flowers late,
and I have not yet seen it ripen its seeds. It is propagated by the
tubers which it produces, and which are regarded, for good reason, a
most excellent food for cattle.... There are few plants more hardy and
so little nice about the soil as the Jerusalem Artichoke; it succeeds
everywhere with the single condition that the ground be not wet.... Of
all the plants that engage the husbandman, the Jerusalem Artichoke is
that which produces the most at the least expense of manure and manual
labor. Kade states that a square patch of Jerusalem Artichokes in a
garden was still in full productive vigor at the end of thirty-three
years, throwing out stems from seven to ten feet in length, although for
a very long time the plant had neither received any care or any manure.
I could quote many examples of the great reproductive power of the
Helianthus; I can affirm, nevertheless, that in order to obtain abundant
crops, it is necessary to afford a little manure.... Schwertz estimates
the mean quantity of dry leaves and stems at three tons, one cwt., one
quarter and fifteen pounds per acre.”
Again, p. 401—“Experiment with horses.—Jerusalem potatoes are held
excellent food for the horse; they are eaten greedily, and he thrives
on them. In this second experiment 30.8 pounds of Jerusalems cut into
slices were substituted for eleven pounds of hay, the same theoretical
equivalents being assumed for them as for the common potato. The ration
now consisted of hay, eleven pounds; straw, five and a half pounds; oats,
seven and a half pounds, and Jerusalem potatoes, 30.8 pounds. Having been
accustomed to this regimen for some days, the teams were weighed, and
having gone on for eleven days, they were weighed again:
_Team No. 1._ _No. 2._ _Both Teams._ _Mean per horse._
In eleven days, gain 55 loss 33 gain 22 gain .9
“A result which leads to the conclusion that the equivalent assumed for
the Jerusalem potato was correct; the animals had done their work, and
gained one with another nine-tenths of a pound in weight.”
Again, p. 406.—“One hundred pounds of good meadow-hay may be taken, as
ascertained by experiment, to be equivalent to
280 of Potatoes, by analysis equal to 315
280 of Jerusalems, ” ” 311
400 of Beets, ” ” 548
400 of Swedes (too little), ” ” 676
400 of Carrots, ” ” 382
Again, p. 415.—“One thousand parts (by weight) of the forage gathered at
Bechelbroun in its ordinary state contained:
_Mineral _Azote._ _Phos. _Lime._ _Bone
Substances._ Acid._ Earth._
Potatoes, 9.64 3.70 1.09 .17 .33
Beet, 7.70 2.10 .46 .54 .95
Turnip, 5.70 1.30 .35 .62 .72
Jerusalems, 12.47 3.75 1.35 .29 .53
Again, p. 449.—“Seventh experiment—with a cow two hundred and ninety
days after calving.—In this trial the ration consisted of Jerusalem
potatoes equivalent to thirty-three pounds of hay, under which the milk
may be said to have remained stationary, though it was above rather than
under the six pints per diem, as in the sixth experiment,” (with Irish
potatoes).
I consider, therefore, that, according to experiment and analysis, the
Jerusalem Artichoke is fully equal to the potato as food for stock, and
greatly superior to beets, turnips, and carrots. In the regimen that I
have prescribed for the cow, I have given the Jerusalem Artichoke the
preference over all other roots, because I deem it superior to them in
all respects. It contains more nutriment than any of them, excepting
the potato; it is less exhaustive of the soil, and more efficacious in
improving it; it produces a larger crop; it is less liable to failure in
adverse weather; it keeps better and with less care; it is eaten with
a greater relish by stock; and it requires less labor in cultivating,
harvesting, and feeding it. Analysis has shown that it contains its
carbonaceous principles in the form of sugar instead of starch, 14.8
parts of uncrystallizable sugar having been found in one hundred parts of
the tuber. It has no starch cells to be broken up by boiling, in order
to make it a digestible aliment; and how large soever the tubers may
be, they can be fed without being cut into slices, on account of their
fragility and brittleness, being masticated by the cow without difficulty
or danger of choking.
The Jerusalem Artichoke is little known and cultivated in this country,
and its merits are not fully appreciated anywhere. The reason probably
is because there is but a limited demand for it in the market. But it
should not be neglected on that account; for it is not the less valuable,
because the profits derived from it are indirect. It should never be
raised as a volunteer crop, as is too often the case, but should be
regularly planted and worked like other products. I have discussed this
plant as advantageous food for “one” cow, and I may add that it is
equally meritorious for any number of cows. But its advantages do not
stop here. Horses, cattle, sheep, and swine, thrive and fatten on it, and
the millions of acres of exhausted and deteriorated lands, that descend
as a profitless inheritance from generation to generation in the Eastern
and Southern States, can be improved and kept fertile, with profit to the
farmer during the process of renovation, without the aid of artificial
fertilizers or imported manures, by feeding the tubers of the Jerusalem
Artichoke to stock on the farm.
VIEWS AND PRACTICE OF A PRACTICAL FARMER.
BY F. E. GOTT, SPENCERPORT, N. Y.
Having been a practical farmer all my life, with considerable experience
in the care of stock and dairying, I give you the result of my
experience. The system of management which would be profitably adopted
by one would be utterly impracticable for another. In my own case I have
about one acre of land, one half of which I set apart for production of
food for my cow, while the remainder is occupied by the buildings in
part, and the rest is devoted to the culture of small fruits. Without
this land I should be obliged to hire my cow pastured through the summer,
at a cost of about fifty cents per week, which I am now able to save by
practising a system of soiling. The advantages of which are numerous.
PROFIT IN BUYING PART OF THE FEED.
I am aware that the amount of land which I have devoted to this purpose
is inadequate. One acre would be none too much to supply a cow with food
through the year, but I can realize more profit by purchasing a portion
of the necessary food and devoting part of my land to the culture of
small fruits, the amount of money received from the sales of which, will
more than pay for the feed that I could raise on the same land.
[Illustration: Fig. 19.—PLAN OF COW-SHED, ETC.]
[Illustration: Fig. 20.—PERSPECTIVE VIEW.]
My barn (figs. 19 and 20) is inexpensive, yet it answers every purpose.
It consists of a box-pen for the cow, an open shed and a pig-sty, the
whole covered by one roof, and occupying a space twenty feet in length
by fourteen feet in breadth. It is constructed of hemlock lumber. The
posts on the front are twelve feet in hight, while those on the back side
are eight. It is boarded vertically and battened on the sides, and the
roof is also covered with rough boards, laid on double, breaking joints
so that no water can leak through. The box for the cow is eight feet by
ten, and is six feet and four inches high in the clear. Adjoining this
is a feeding passage four feet by eight. The arrangement of doors is
shown in the accompanying sketch. The middle portion of the building is
an open shed, and is seven feet wide by fourteen feet long. It is used
principally for storing dry muck and also as a cover for the manure pile.
Adjoining the open shed is the pig-pen. While the partition between the
cow-stall and shed is carried up to the floor above, making a tight box
stall, that between the pig-sty and shed is only built four feet from
the ground, leaving the upper part open. A floor is laid at a hight of
six feet ten inches from the ground, which provides storage room for hay
above. I would suggest, as an improvement to this plan, that the whole
be built two feet higher, making the long posts fourteen feet instead of
twelve, and the short ones ten instead of eight, thereby securing more
room above. There would then be sufficient room for the storage of over
two thousand pounds of clover hay. Of course the provision I have made
for a pig is outside of the question under consideration, but in view of
the fact that wherever a cow is kept, a pig may also be profitably raised
and fattened on the skim-milk and much that would otherwise be wasted,
and at the same time increase greatly the value of the manure heap, I
think such provision should be made, especially as the cost of such an
addition to the cow’s shed is but little. In case it is not desirable to
keep a pig, the space may be used as a calf-pen or for the storage of
straw. The cost of the building which I have described should not exceed
fifty dollars.
The only way to secure a good cow, is to keep trying until we get such
a cow as we want and then hold on to her. We may have to change several
times before we can bring this about, but there is no infallible rule for
selecting a good cow. Were I to select one for myself, I should select
one not over five years old, of gentle, quiet disposition, with a large
barrel; one whose udder is large and well formed, with teats set well
apart, of good size, and projecting slightly outward from each other, and
with large milk veins.
The method which I have adopted in the management of my cow, has this in
its favor, that it has been highly and uniformly profitable to me.
MANAGING THE MANURE PILE.
I shall first present my mode of making manure, and of applying the same.
The prevalent idea among those who keep a single cow or other domestic
animal is, that the manure, instead of being saved and protected from
loss with the greatest care, is a nuisance, which should be summarily
disposed of. It is an established fact that the liquid portion of the
excrement nearly, if not quite, equals in value the solid portion, and
in order to save both we must provide some means by which the liquid and
volatile portions of the manure may be prevented from going to waste.
This is best accomplished by means of absorbents, and there is nothing
better or cheaper for this purpose than dried muck or earth, a good
supply of which should be constantly kept under cover where it is easily
accessible. Fortunately I am so situated that I can obtain a supply quite
easily. There is within half a mile from my place a large tract of swamp
land, from which I can obtain, for a low price, all the “muck” I need.
Every fall, I store away under my shed a sufficient quantity to last me
through the winter. This had previously been thrown into piles and dried.
It is quite essential that it should be thoroughly dried, so that it
will readily absorb the liquid manure, and this may be accomplished by
piling and allowing it to be exposed to sun and air for six months or a
year before wanted for use. The bottom of the stall is covered with ten
or twelve inches of the dry muck, over which I scatter a light covering
of cut straw or sawdust, so as to secure a clean bed, and prevent the
particles of dirt and muck from sticking to the cow and dropping from
thence into the pail. The dry earth readily absorbs the liquid droppings
and whenever it becomes saturated with the same, may be removed, together
with the manure and soiled straw, to a pile beneath the covered shed,
when a fresh supply of dry muck, enough to replace that which was removed
is carried in and the whole is again covered with the cut straw. An
occasional sprinkling of plaster (gypsum) is applied both to the litter
in the stall and to the manure heap, which prevents any loss of ammonia,
and hence all unpleasant odors are avoided. Whenever a forkful of manure
is put on the pile, it is immediately covered with muck. Twice each year
this is hauled on to the land. Manure thus treated will not waste, either
by the leaching out of soluble matter, by the escape of ammonia, or by
fire-fanging. And as there is no coarse material, such as long straw or
corn stalks mingled with it, it is always in a suitable condition to
use. If dry earth or muck cannot be obtained, cut straw or sawdust may
be substituted. But earth, being an excellent deodorizer itself, and
containing, as it does, much valuable fertilizing matter, is much to be
preferred.
If artificial fertilizers are used, they may at any time be mixed with
the compost heap. Also, when a pig is kept, its pen should be cleaned
daily and the litter, mingled with the general pile, will add greatly
to its value. Common salt may occasionally be added to the compost heap
with advantage, but ashes never, as they tend to liberate the ammonia and
thereby cause waste.
YARD ROOM AND EXERCISE.
It is not necessary to have a large yard connected with the stable, as
a cow is seldom inclined to exercise her locomotive powers more than
is required to secure her food, and if this is placed before her at
suitable times and in sufficient quantity to supply her demands, she
will remain perfectly contented in an enclosure twenty feet square. In
planning our buildings let us bear in mind that sunlight is essential
to perfect health. Therefore we should have the yard on the sunny side
of the building. At the same time we should see that there is a shady
corner, where the cow may take herself during intense heat. A hint in
this direction is sufficient. Nothing can be more cruel than to force
any dumb animal to stand exposed to the rays of an August mid-day sun, or
where she is tormented nearly to death by flies. Yet we often see just
such inhuman neglect on the part of those who should know better.
Although in many respects desirable, a pasture lot is not absolutely
essential, and in the case of the villager, whose land is measured by
feet instead of acres, it must be dispensed with. Hence we have recourse
to what is termed the soiling system, which is simply cultivating such
crops as will produce a succession of green food throughout the season,
and placing the same before the cow in such quantities and at such times
as she may require, instead of allowing her to tramp around after her
feed, and thereby waste more than she eats. It requires some skill and
judgment to carry out this plan successfully, but wherever it has bean
practised judiciously and intelligently, the results have been uniformly
satisfactory. As to what amount of land is required in order to keep
a cow through the year, I will not pretend to say; nor do I think it
advisable to try to produce the entire amount of food required for a full
year’s sustenance.
HAY.
I know that for me it is far better to purchase what hay will be needed
to feed through the winter than to attempt to grow it. Besides, our
village lots are much too small to be profitably converted into hay
fields, and even if there should be more land than is necessary to
furnish the soiling crops for summer feeding, it is usually much better
economy to employ the same in the cultivation of small fruits, which, as
I have before stated, more than pays for what hay is required, besides
supplying us with many luxuries.
In my own case, I have set apart one-half of an acre from which to supply
the cow with food during a period extending from May first to November
first. Now this will be entirely insufficient, except under the very
best cultivation and management, which, of course, I am bound to bestow
upon it. That it is sufficient, with proper care, I have repeatedly
proved. Such results could hardly be expected, however, from land which
has received no previous preparation, and is worn, wormy, and weedy.
Let us assume, then, that our half acre is in a good, fair state of
productiveness. To produce a continuous supply of wholesome fodder, I
find a system of rotation must be practised, and have subdivided my half
acre into four equal parts, containing each one-eighth of an acre, or
twenty square rods. These I shall designate as plots one, two, three,
and four. Plot one is at the present time in clover, having been seeded
one year ago, and will be ready for use about June. Plot two was sown
to winter rye last October, and will be seeded down with clover this
spring. From this patch of rye I shall obtain the earliest feed, and
will begin using it about May first. Plot three will be sown with corn,
drilled thickly in rows two and a half feet apart, which, if sown as soon
as danger from frost is past, will be ready for use about August first.
Plot four will be sown to mangels or sugar beets. I prefer the latter,
and this is the only crop cultivated for winter use. Both this crop and
the corn are planted with a garden seed drill, while the rye is sown
broadcast. On the first of May I begin cutting the rye. Up to this time
the cow has been fed on clover, hay, and grain.
I calculate to have the cow drop her calf at about April first. To this
end I have her served about June twenty-fifth. Of course, we cannot
always have our own way in this matter, but, accident excepted, we can
usually manage so as to approximate the time. During a period of a few
days subsequent to parturition, I feed quite sparingly—however, allowing
her all the long hay she will eat, together with a peck of beets twice
a day, but no grain of any kind, this reduced ration being necessary to
avoid the danger which might result from the too abundant secretion of
milk at this time, which high feeding would tend to produce. If at the
end of the fifth day after calving, no bad results have occurred, such
as milk fever, and there is little or no caking of the bag, I begin to
gradually increase the feed, until, at the tenth day, I reach the normal
standard, which is as follows:
DAILY FEEDING.
At half-past five A. M. I feed her four quarts of a mixture consisting
of one part each of corn meal and oat meal, and two parts of bran. Four
quarts of this is mixed with a heaping half bushel of cut (chaffed) hay,
moistened but not soaked. While she is occupied in eating, I clean the
manure from the stable, remove all dirt from her udder, and any that
would be likely to drop into the pail while milking. Sometimes a sponge
and water are required to accomplish this, but usually an old piece of
a blanket kept for the purpose is all that is necessary. I then milk
and carry the milk directly to the house before it has time to cool or
absorb odors, which, even with the utmost care and cleanliness cannot
be entirely avoided. After breakfast, I give the cow a peck of sliced
beets, on which has been sprinkled about a dessert spoonful of salt,
which completes her breakfast. At this time it is a very good plan to use
the curry comb or card for ten or fifteen minutes, though I must confess
that I sometimes neglect this part of the programme: still I think that
my cow gets far more indulgence in this direction than most cows in the
neighborhood. After she has finished eating, if the weather is not too
unfavorable, I allow her to run out in the yard, where, at noon, I give
her just as much long hay as she will eat up clean, and no more.
There is at all times plenty of fresh water in the yard, to which she
can help herself whenever she so desires; otherwise she would need
to have it supplied to her at least twice a day, but not immediately
before or after a feed of grain. At half-past five in the afternoon
she receives the same amount of food, and prepared in the same manner
as in the morning. This method is continued until the crop of rye is
large enough for use. All changes from dry to green feed must be made
gradually, if we would avoid loss. By this time our supply of roots will
be exhausted, but the green food, in a measure, takes the place of them.
I continue to give the same amount of grain throughout the summer as
I did through the month of April, and also to mix it with chaffed hay
slightly moistened, as this insures the complete mastication and thorough
intermingling with the saliva, which is so essential to perfect digestion
and assimilation. As the supply of green food increases, I diminish the
quantity of chaffed hay until but one-half the former amount is used,
which quantity is continued through the soiling season. The one-eighth
acre of rye will last until about June fifteenth, at which time the red
clover will be large enough to feed. We should not change abruptly from
one kind of green food to another, but increase the one and diminish the
other gradually until the change is complete. To ascertain the exact
amount needed for a feed of this kind, as well as of the other green
crops, requires some judgment on the part of the feeder; but a very safe
rule is to feed just such an amount as the cow will eat clean, and no
more. We cannot specify exactly what would be a proper amount in every
case, neither can we spend time to weigh each ration, but, by observing
carefully, we are enabled to determine very closely. I find that my cow
will eat, besides her other feed, a good armful of green fodder three
times a day. I always cut a day’s supply on the afternoon preceding, and
allow it to remain in the swath, where it will wilt, and a portion of
the water evaporate, thereby rendering it more wholesome than when fed
immediately after cutting, and I think my cow relishes it better. By the
fifteenth or twentieth of July the clover will have become so ripe as
to necessitate the cutting and curing of any that may be left at that
time. It may still be fed, however, for a few days, or until the sowed
corn becomes large enough to take its place, which is generally about the
first of August. This crop, and the second cutting of the clover, will
complete the course, and will furnish feed until well along into October,
or the first of November, after which I depend on purchased food.
[Illustration: Fig. 21.—THE DUTCH (HOLSTEIN) COW “CROWN PRINCESS.”]
WINTER FEED AND TREATMENT.
If not previously done, I now procure three thousand pounds of the best
early cut clover hay. As my shed is not sufficiently large to store
away this amount, I am obliged to stack part of it. I also procure bran
and meal. The amount of these which I require for a year’s supply is:
of bran, one thousand pounds; of corn meal, one thousand pounds; and
of oat meal, seven hundred and fifty pounds. These amounts, well mixed
together, will furnish a feed of eight quarts per day, which amount is
diminished during the period in which the cow is dry, and is sometimes
increased, if by any means other food is short. It is not advisable
to procure all this feed at once, for, if stored, it would be quite
likely to heat and mould before it could be used, besides being subject
to loss from rats and other vermin. I therefore procure one-sixth of
this amount, or two months’ supply at a time, and I have often found it
convenient and profitable to buy the corn and oats and have them ground
myself. The course pursued in feeding from November first until February
fifteenth, at which time the cow becomes dry, is similar to that which I
have described for the month of April. It is better to dry off the cow
four, five, or even six weeks prior to calving. Sometimes, in order to do
this, it will be necessary to omit the grain and diminish the quantity of
roots for a few days, but after she becomes quite dry I resume feeding as
before, except perhaps to lessen the amount of grain until within a few
days of calving, when I omit the grain entirely until, as I have before
stated, the danger from milk fever, etc., is past.
CALVING.
Some people continue to milk their cows until within a very short time
of calving. This is very poor economy. The milk at such times is thin
and insipid, and unfit for food. I have never found any “preparatory
treatment” of the cow prior to parturition, such as physicing,
etc., to be necessary; but place her on short rations for a few
days—administering, as one writer terms it, “judicious starvation.” The
feed of roots is continued, as they exert a laxative effect on the bowels
and tissues, thereby obviating the necessity of giving a huge dose of
Epsom Salts. In an experience of fifteen years, by following this plan
of restricting the diet, I have not had a case of milk fever, apoplexy,
or retention of placenta, and but one case which called for assistance,
and this was due wholly to an accident. When a single cow is kept, she
is, of course, exempt from the ill consequences which so often result
from crowding and fighting with other cows, and, if kindly treated and
provided with comfortable accommodations for feeding and shelter, she
will seldom have any trouble. But cases where assistance is indispensable
do sometimes occur, even under the best management, the most frequent
of which is the retention of the placenta or after-birth. If, at the
end of twenty-four hours, the cow has not “cleaned,” it is then time
to undertake the removal of the placenta. This can be accomplished by
carefully introducing the right arm of a man having a small hand, which
should previously be well greased, into the cavity of the uterus, when
the connecting attachments will readily be found and may be separated,
after which the whole may be brought away. These attachments are often
quite numerous, and care should be taken that all are detached, and that
the whole of the after-birth is removed, as serious results sometimes
occur when a portion of it is retained.
If, from any cause, the fœtus has got into an unnatural position,
or shows any other presentation than that of the two fore feet and
muzzle, natural labor may be rendered impossible, and assistance will
be required in order to set matters right. There are several abnormal
positions in which the calf may be presented, while there are but two
positions in which delivery is practicable. In the natural position the
two fore feet and nose are the parts which make their first appearance.
When this is the case we may generally conclude that our services
will not be required. If, on the other hand, there is any alteration
of this position, either by the absence of the head or of one or both
feet, or if, when labor pains have continued for some time, there is
no presentation at all, it will be necessary to investigate the cause.
The owner’s duty, in cases of this nature, will be to restore it, by
judicious manipulation, to its normal position, or to such a position as
will render delivery practicable. If, from the nature of the case, the
fore legs and nose of the fœtus cannot be brought into such a position,
we must endeavor to bring up the hind legs and deliver it in that
position. It frequently occurs in this position, as well as sometimes in
the natural one, that traction will have to be applied. In such cases
it should be applied simultaneously with the throes of the cow. In rare
cases it becomes necessary to amputate portions of the fœtus and bring
them away separately, which operation should be left to the veterinary
surgeon. In fact, whenever assistance is required, it is better to
employ the services of a competent surgeon, if such can be obtained. But
where professional assistance cannot be obtained, it is much better to
use one’s own judgment than to depend on the village cow doctor, who is
usually one of the most ignorant persons in the community. Happily, cases
requiring any assistance, where a single cow is kept, are rare.
For _Mamitis_ or garget I have given successfully the following powder
twice daily: Pulverized Digitalis, one drahm; Nitre, one ounce; Cream of
Tartar, one-half ounce; mix and give in the feed. If the bag is caked and
hard, let the calf run with the cow for a few days.
I do not consider it profitable to raise the calf, therefore I dispose of
it as soon as possible. There are always plenty of farmers or farmers’
boys who are glad to buy a good calf to raise, and will willingly pay one
or two dollars for the same, and take it right away. I prefer to raise
and fatten a pig instead.
ACCIDENTS AND FAILURES.
It is no more than fair for me to say concerning my plan of feeding,
that I have occasionally been obliged to modify some of the details, on
account of unfavorable circumstances. For instance, I have been forced to
cut grass from the highway in front of my house, to supply a deficiency
in some crop, caused by unfavorable weather, or some accident or other.
In the spring of 1878, my clover failed to catch, leaving me to make
up for the loss of that crop as well as I could. It was certainly most
unfortunate, inasmuch as it seriously interfered with the whole system
of rotation. To carry out the plan of soiling successfully requires
considerable time and labor. And on the whole, unless one has plenty of
the former at his disposal, and a good wholesome inclination for the
latter, he could do full as well to adopt the old time practice of having
his cow pastured by the week, in which case no other labor than milking
would be required, while, if she were allowed a feed of meal or bran at
the time of milking, night and morning, very satisfactory results would
be obtained.
ONE YEAR’S RESULTS.
To show what I have accomplished by it, I will give an account of the
products of my cow “Polly,” for the year ending April first, 1880,
together with a statement of the actual expenses of her keeping.
Besides what was used in a family of four, I have sold one hundred and
sixty-nine pounds of butter, at an average of twenty cents per pound,
which amounts to thirty-three dollars and eighty cents; eight hundred and
twenty-eight quarts of milk, at six cents per quart, forty-nine dollars
and sixty-eight cents; eighteen quarts of butter-milk, at three cents
per quart, fifty-four cents; eleven quarts of sour milk, at two cents,
twenty-two cents; one calf, four days old, one dollar and seventy-five
cents; total, eighty-five dollars and ninety-nine cents. To this I may
add one hundred and twenty pounds of butter consumed at home, twenty-four
dollars, and about two hundred and thirty quarts of milk, worth thirteen
dollars and eighty cents; making in all, one hundred and twenty-three
dollars and seventy-nine cents. The cost of feed was as follows: One
thousand pounds bran, nine dollars and sixty cents; one thousand pounds
corn meal, eleven dollars and fifty cents; seven hundred and fifty pounds
of oatmeal, nine dollars and eighty five cents; three thousand pounds
clover hay, thirteen dollars and fifty cents; two hundred pounds rye
straw, one dollar and fifty cents; muck, two dollars; total, forty-seven
dollars and ninety-five cents; leaving a balance of seventy-five dollars
and eighty-four cents. As I keep a horse, I have the necessary tools for
cultivating the land myself, I have not added the cost of cultivation as
an item in the expense column, and perhaps it may be said that I should
also have added interest on land and buildings. As an offset to these,
I would call attention to the valuable pile of manure, and furthermore
I have made no account of a large amount of skim-milk, on which I
raised a pig. This pig was fed nothing but sour milk, and a very few
small potatoes, until about four weeks prior to butchering, when he was
“finished off” on corn meal. He weighed, after being dressed, December
twenty-eighth, two hundred and seventy-eight pounds. The profits from
this cow would undoubtedly have been larger had I sold all the milk,
instead of making butter out of a part of it, but I did not make mere
profit my sole object in the matter. I wished to supply my family with
those necessary luxuries which, I believe, are rendered even sweeter by
the consciousness of their being the products of our own labor. The
pleasure which I have taken in caring for my pet cow, and in providing
for her wants, and the pride I feel in exhibiting both my cow and the
delicious rich milk and yellow butter, with which she so bountifully
supplies us, amply repays me for my part of the labor. I have made no
account of using concentrated food, such as oil-cake and cotton-seed
meal, for the reason that I have had very little experience in the use
of them. Whenever an animal has become thin and poor, these articles of
food may be used to advantage to increase the flesh and bring the animal
into good condition. But I never let my cow get poor, and I find that
good hay, with corn, oats, and bran, answers every purpose, and is fully
adequate to all her requirements. My system of rotation is as follows:
The one-eighth acre of clover sod of the preceding year is well manured
either during the winter or in the spring, and well fitted up and sown to
beets or mangels. This crop occupies the land during the whole season.
The same plot is again plowed the next spring for sowed corn. After this
crop is off it is again manured and sown to rye, and the following spring
is again seeded to clover. It is kept in clover one year, yielding two
crops during the season, after which it is treated as before. Each of
the four plots undergoes the same treatment; thus a complete rotation is
established.
[Illustration]
KEEPING A COW ON CAPE COD.
BY M. T. T. NICKERSON, SOUTH DENNIS, MASS.
We live in a section of country where nature has not been lavish with
her gifts. Our soil is sandy and only produces paying crops by high
cultivation. Farming with us comes near to being one of the lost arts.
We are not tillers of the soil. Living, as we do, within sound of the
Atlantic surf, as it beats its everlasting measure upon our coast, we,
from associations of birth and early training, plow the Ocean for a
living, the furrows frequently stretching from pole to pole, or to the
opposite side of the globe. Few, very few, keep cows. A large proportion
of our people do not keep any, and it is not common to find many that
have more than one.
We keep a good grade Jersey, and will give our way of keeping one cow,
having learned long ago, that stock of any kind paid for good care.
Keeping a lot of cattle or hogs, or poultry, and simply feeding what
we happen to have, or what we can buy cheap, leaving them to shift for
themselves in cold and stormy weather, or giving them wet uncomfortable
stables, always results in disease to the stock and loss to the owner.
We sow as early in the spring as the ground is in condition to work,
forty rods with a mixture of oats and peas, and forty rods in spring
rye. We commence cutting our oats and peas as soon as the peas begin to
bloom. Where we have a good stand, a rod per day, divided in three feeds,
morning, noon, and night, is generally enough. As soon as we have cut
about ten rods we plow under the stubble, and plant Early Minnesota Sweet
Corn—rows two and one half feet apart—hills two feet in the rows, leaving
two and three stalks in a hill. The next ten rods we serve in the same
manner. If our rye is now grown enough to cut with profit we commence
feeding it, and cut the balance of our oats and peas, and cure them for
winter.
If our rye is not fit to cut for soiling, we continue to use our oats and
peas until it is, and then cure for winter what is left. As soon as the
last of our oats are off, we plant about four rods with beets (mangel
wurzel). We prefer the Globe varieties, as the yield is better on our
soil. The balance of our oat-and-pea ground we sow with Hungarian grass.
As soon as we have cut ten rods of our rye, we manage as with our oats,
turn under the stubble and again plant sweet corn. The earlier the
variety the better. We prefer the Early Minnesota. As soon as we have
cleared off the next ten rods of our rye, we plant from two to four rods
with turnips. The balance we sow with a mixture of Hungarian and the
earliest “Canada Gray” pea. We now feed our rye until our first planting
of corn and Hungarian will do to feed, when we turn under the rest of the
rye stubble (curing what is left of the rye for winter), sow half with
Hungarian and the balance we sow (not plant) with sweet corn. As soon as
our first planting of corn is cut up, we sow two or three rows broadcast
with flat turnips, some of the strap-leaved varieties, hoeing or raking
them in by hand. We continue to plant or sow some quick-growing variety
of corn, peas, grass, grain, or roots, even when it is very doubtful if
we shall receive any return for our time and work; but we frequently get
a fair yield from our third planting. I presume a great many will be
sceptical in regard to this “third crop business.” It must be remembered
that our first sowing is made very early in the spring, and that we do
not wait until any of our forage crops mature, but we cut them long
before they would be ripe, thereby shortening the time of their growth
and leaving the ground to be planted with something else.
The above is no iron rule, but subject to great variations. Our plan is
to sow as early as possible in the spring with the earliest maturing
grass or grain we can get, and from the time we commence cutting until
there is no possibility of getting any return. We sow and plant wherever
we have a few rods of bare ground, as soon as any of our crops are
maturing or there is something coming forward to take its place. We cut
and cure what is left for winter. We advise close seeding in all cases,
roots, of course, excepted.
COW KEPT ON HALF AN ACRE.
If the season is favorable, we manage to keep our one cow nicely on half
an acre, or rather on the fodder grown on half an acre. But sometimes, on
account of drouth or late frost, we are obliged to buy a little hay in
the spring.
It is impossible for us to say how much feed must be bought. We generally
have a bag of corn (two bushels), and a bag of oats (two and a half
bushels), ground together, feeding from two to four quarts a day,
according to the amount of roots used, and the season of the year,
feeding meal very sparingly in summer. We frequently reserve two or three
rods in the spring for early turnips, to be fed when large enough for
profit, but always feed turnips immediately after milking to prevent
flavoring the milk. We generally have a few cabbage plants started to
set where the corn misses, or the beets or turnips fail to come up, or
in any corner or by-place where there is room for a cabbage to grow.
Sometimes we reserve a few rods for cabbages late in the season, as we
find them excellent for a change of feed either winter or summer. We
advise, in all cases, the use of the earliest varieties of grass, grain,
or vegetables, as we cannot afford the time and ground occupied by some
of the larger and taller growing varieties, being convinced, from actual
experience, that two and three crops of early varieties, although small,
are more profitable than one crop of the larger late varieties.
THE STABLE AND THE MANURE CELLAR
The stable for our cow is a shed nine by sixteen, built on the south side
of our carriage and wagon house. One-half of the shed is partitioned off
and enclosed for winter use or stormy weather; the other half of the
shed is open on the south side, and our yard is about sixteen by thirty,
including the shed. We think it would be better to have it larger, but we
get along with it nicely. We find the best way to dispose of her manure
is to have a small cellar underneath the stable, with cemented bottom and
sides, so as to be water tight, the stable to have a tight floor with a
gutter behind the cow to receive the droppings and urine, with a scuttle
or trap door in the gutter to let it all go into the cellar. For bedding,
we use forest leaves, and use them liberally. Where forest leaves cannot
be obtained, any refuse hay or straw will answer, but the cow as well as
the horse should have plenty of good dry bedding. To mix with the urine
and droppings of the cow, we put into the cellar, sea-weed, muck, turf,
slops from the house, and soap suds, or anything we think will make good
compost. We gather up the droppings from the yard and throw them into
the cellar. We keep our yard well laid with forest leaves. If those are
not available, we use the next best thing we can get. In the fall, when
we cart the manure out of the cellar, we gather up what has accumulated
in the yard and put it into the cellar. In this way we save all of the
manure, and in excellent condition. Now, to make it better and save the
labor of pitching it over, we keep a pig where he can have access to
the cellar, and if not disposed to work, we keep him on short feed and
scatter corn in the cellar, so that in order to get it, he will have to
root the whole mass over in good shape.
We cart our manure out in the fall, distributing it over our land as
evenly as possible, and plow it under as deep as we can. We do not sow
anything for next year’s use, as we think we get a better return from our
land to sow early in the spring and continue it through the summer. It
is a mistaken idea, or rather a grave blunder, to undertake to grow good
crops of anything without the liberal use of manures. As soon as our land
will do to work in the spring, we sow our oats, peas, and rye, giving a
top dressing of guano, superphosphates, or bone meal, which we repeat
with each successive sowing, also giving each hill of corn and rows of
beets and turnips a small quantity. We alternate the top dressings, that
is, if we use superphosphate the first sowing, we use ground bone or
guano the second, and vice versa, as we find the continuous use of any
one kind of manure or fertilizer is as injurious as continuous planting
of corn or potatoes, without rotating with something else.
BARRELS FOR KEEPING ROOTS.
We have a way of our own for keeping our roots in the absence of a
vegetable cellar, or when we do not want them in the house cellar. We
take any old barrels and set them in the ground, the chiner just coming
to the top of the ground (we do not want a head in either end of the
barrels). Into these headless barrels we put our beets, turnips, cabbage,
etc. As the weather grows cold we cover the barrels with some loose
boards. Whenever it is cold enough to freeze hard, we throw over them
enough hay or straw to keep out the wet. By this method we can, with
very little trouble at any time, get out a barrel or part of a barrel of
roots. In this way the roots keep in fine condition. Late in the spring,
turnips and beets will be as brittle and good as when pulled in the fall.
Our subject is “keeping one cow,” but any one that feels disposed to try
it, will find the above a very fine way to keep turnips, beets, cabbage,
or celery, for family use.
We prefer to have our cow calve about the first of April, as we then have
time to make veal of the calf before we begin to make grass butter. There
is generally, in any place, a better demand for milk through the winter,
and better prices, hence if one wishes to sell milk and buy butter, it
would perhaps be better to have her calve in the fall.
We hardly feel competent to advise, if help is needed in calving. As her
time of calving draws nigh, we give our cow extra care and attention. If
the bowels are kept in a healthy condition, we apprehend there is rarely
trouble, from the fact that our cows have always calved without the need
of help.
If there is ready sale for milk at paying prices, we would dispose of the
calf in some way, when it is a few days old, but if milk is not salable
at good prices, it is better to let the calf have the milk until from
four to six weeks old, and then if the butcher will not give us a fair
price for it, we get some one to dress it for us, and sell it among our
neighbors, who are generally glad to buy it. In that way we get from
eight to twelve dollars for our calf. We think it as well for the cow to
keep the calf for that length of time. It seems to satisfy a necessity of
her nature to have her baby suck and draw its nourishment from her. We
know of no better picture of contentment than to see an old cow suckling
her calf after being away from it all day.
We advise regular hours of milking night and morning, and kind, gentle
treatment, carding in winter, cleanliness and thorough ventilation
of stable at all times. In summertime, if confined in a yard, a thin
sheet to keep off the flies will be found very comfortable for the cow,
and profitable to the owner. I presume some will ridicule the idea of
blanketing the cow, but why not as well as the horse? Again, if confined
in a yard, she should have plenty of clean pure water, and plenty of
shade. Keeping a cow, with us, is not altogether a matter of fancy or
pleasure, but of convenience, economy, comfort, profit, and health, in
having pure sweet milk and fresh butter.
[Illustration]
ALFALFA OR LUCERN.
BY SAM’L C. HAMMER, DOWNEY CITY, CAL.
I have lived in Tennessee, in Texas, and now reside in California. I have
been using Alfalfa for some eight or ten years, and from my own personal
care of and attention to this article, I maintain one can obtain more
milk the year round from it, without change to other food, than from any
one thing grown. Besides, Alfalfa can be grown at less expense, and is
attended with less labor, whether fed green or cured, than any other feed.
Alfalfa can be grown in Canada, it is said. If so, then any one has the
chance to try this wonderful friend to the farmer. Once sown on deeply
cultivated land, free of weeds, it is good for ten years, or even more,
with us. Twenty pounds is abundant seed for an acre—some think too much;
but it should be sown thickly. Let it stand thick, and it is finer and
more tender. Where sown sparsely it becomes woody and coarse. It can be
cut here as early as March, where mowing and not grazing is adhered to,
and it should never be grazed or “staked” (fed off by tethered cattle).
From seven to nine cuttings can be obtained from it, and from fifteen to
twenty tons of cured hay a year made to the acre; that is, if on good
land and if the crop fully occupies the ground, and is cut just as a few
scattering blooms are observed. This hay must be cured as rapidly as
possible, raked in windrows and bunched the second day, rather letting it
cure in bunches than in any other manner, to prevent leaves falling off;
then housing or “shedding” it soon as possible, sprinkling salt through
it as stacked, to prevent mould.
Alfalfa needs no top-dressing with fertilizers and manure, but simply
a severe cross-harrowing with a very sharp-toothed harrow, bearing the
weight of a man. The more the Alfalfa is torn and split up the better it
will grow. This harrowing should be done in spring before it commences
its first growth. After growing a few years, the stools project, in
many places, above the surface of the ground. If an implement could be
devised for the purpose of cutting off all these old stalks just below
the surface, then seed lightly, giving a good harrowing, the plants would
be renewed, and would thicken up rapidly, for wherever a stalk or root is
cut off, dozens of new shoots spring up in its place.
However, I advocate a change of diet for brutes as well as mankind, and
therefore take for the family cow a half acre of most excellent ground.
I will suppose that one half of it—that is a quarter acre—is well set
in Alfalfa. The rest I would have plowed twice, very deep, smoothed and
laid off in drills for carrots, which, at the proper season (with us in
February or March), I would enrich in the furrows with any well-rotted
manure. For Alfalfa almost any good soil suits, for I find it adapts
itself to various soils and endures a great deal of rough treatment, but
in order to get the best results it should be well treated. I prefer a
moderately sandy soil, which is naturally moist. On dry, mellow ground,
it will send down a tap-root ten feet. I have drawn roots out of very
sandy soil when digging post holes that would measure six feet. They seek
moisture during dry weather, and although I have had Alfalfa die down,
the ground being parched and cracked, yet when the fall or winter rains
begin, it springs up in a few days.
As soon as the Alfalfa comes in, feed it alone, salting as suits one’s
own idea. When the first scattering blooms appear I would cut the
remainder—namely, that which had not been cut each day for the cow.
I would then cure it as rapidly as possible, and put it under cover,
sprinkling salt over it. I now advocate and practice feeding the cured
hay in preference to the green. By the latter you obtain a greater flow
of milk, but with the former I consider the milk richer, and this is the
experience of dairymen with whom I have conversed.
A cow learns to eat the cured fodder almost as readily as the green,
and all danger of bloat is obviated. Some may think because I am in
California that irrigation makes some difference, but my Alfalfa grows
without it. I cut mine six times last summer, 1879, and it was an
exceptionally dry and hot season. Our rains fall mostly in winter, and
that has to do us until the next winter.
Now, as to the cow, I would place her in a corral or lot, we’ll say, of
one-fourth to half an acre in size, giving her a comfortable house or
shed for winter, in which I think she should be fastened by a closed door
in cold rainy weather. At other times she should be allowed the run of
the lot, having access to good fresh water at least twice a day. Shade
trees for summer’s hot sun are indispensable. In this lot or corral you
have all the manure where it can be gathered up daily or weekly, and
composted or housed, ready to be spread on the ground for future crops.
Some would say a cow should be curried every morning. They certainly do
enjoy it, but many California farmers never saw such a thing done. I
think it should be done just before the animals begin to shed their old
coats; afterwards I see little use of it.
PERMANENT GRASS AS SOILING CROP.
BY P. S. NORRIS, ANGELICA, N. Y.
The keeping of one cow seems to be generally regarded as a matter of so
little importance, and one so simple in its nature, that even persons of
low intelligence can scarcely fail of success. But to keep a cow in such
a manner as to receive the greatest return for the least possible expense
in labor and money, requires the most careful study of the nature and
habits, endurance, needs, and the productive capabilities of the animal,
and involves scientific principles which are deeper and broader than
those generally applied to the keeping of stock of any kind.
If the average quantity of milk be ten quarts per day during the year,
and the expense twenty cents per day, the milk will cost two cents per
quart, and if the milk is worth three cents per quart, there is a net
profit of fifty per cent upon the cost of keeping, or ten cents per day.
But if the quantity of milk be eight quarts per day, and the expense
twelve cents, the milk will cost only one and a half cents per quart, or
twelve cents per day. Then three cents per quart for the milk will leave
an actual profit of one hundred per cent upon the cost of keeping, or
twelve cents per day.
One acre, and even something less, put in good condition, well fertilized
and properly seeded, will be ample for a pasture, and will furnish
plenty of nutritious feed, upon which, with proper care, the cow will
yield an abundant flow of rich and delicious milk; while one-third of
an acre of similar soil will produce sufficient hay for the winter. The
pasture should be divided into two parts, the cow to be kept a few days
in each alternately, with plenty of pure water and shade. Where land is
high, as it always is in towns and villages of any size, the practice of
“soiling,” as it is usually termed, is the most profitable way to keep a
cow. For this purpose, a small yard, some twenty to thirty feet square,
perhaps, or of such size as can be afforded, may be provided, containing
an open shed—the more open the better for the summer—only so that it will
shelter the animal from the heat of the sun and the storms. The yard and
shed should be kept as clean and dry as possible, or the cow will become
ill. Plenty of pure water is indispensable at all times. A comfortable
place for the cow to lie down is very important. Sawdust, forest leaves,
old straw, or other convenient and cheap litter will answer for bedding;
or, if the ground be smooth, clean and dry, that may be sufficient. The
manure is to be carefully collected and placed under another shed, or
other convenient place under shelter provided for the purpose, and, to
prevent bad odors, the heap should receive, once in two or three days,
a light covering of muck, leaves, sods, weeds dug up in the garden or
elsewhere, or fine earth—almost anything that will rot—and thus not only
prevent the unpleasantness and unhealthfulness of such odors, and the
loss that would result from their escape, but add largely to the size
and value of the manure heap. Now, have about two-thirds of an acre of
land, highly manured, and, with the exception of about fourteen square
rods, well seeded with a variety of nutritious grasses. This quantity
of land, if properly enriched and cultivated, will keep a cow the year
round, and keep her well, without purchasing any feed. A good rack or
other arrangement in the shade is necessary, in which to feed, so that
nothing shall be wasted. Then, quite early in the season, the grass upon
this rich soil will be large enough to be cut and fed to the cow. While
the ground is sufficiently moist, in the fore part of the season, the
grass will grow very rapidly, and, when the soil becomes a little too
dry, about half a bushel of plaster, or twice as much lime, or two or
three bushels of wood ashes, scattered upon it, will usually renew the
vigor and freshness of the crop, which may be repeated with benefit two
or three times before the end of the growing season. Another excellent
fertilizer, which may be applied during the summer, is the waste water
from the house, such as soap suds, dish water, and any other slops that
are to be thrown away. These should all be saved and scattered upon the
grass from pails, if no better method is ordinarily practicable, and it
will pay a person many times over for the trouble. A light top-dressing
of manure from the cow-yard or shed will be necessary every year, or
every second year certainly, applied in the fall, or early in the spring.
As soon as the grass has fairly got into blossom, it should be
immediately cut and well-cured for winter use, unless it may be necessary
to save a small quantity to feed until that portion which was first cut
for the cow shall be ready to cut again. Grass should never be allowed
to stand until the seed has formed, as just previous to that time it is
more nutritious than at any other period. Hay cut thus early will make
much more and better milk, and keep a cow in better condition than that
which is cut later. A portion of the grass can be mown a second time for
hay, and still leave enough for green feed until foddering time. The
exact proportion of the crop to be made into hay must, of course, depend
upon circumstances. All that is not needed for summer use should be cured
for winter, and the quantity will, generally, be sufficient, if, indeed,
there is not an overplus, as will quite likely occur in many cases.
[Illustration: Fig. 22.—SHORTHORN COW “COLD CREAM.”]
BEST KINDS OF GRASSES.
It is important to know what kinds of grasses are best adapted to the
production of milk and butter, for both summer and winter feeding; and
upon this depends, in a great measure, the profits to be realized. The
practice of seeding with a single kind of grass, or even with a mixture
of clover and timothy, is not a good one. Four of the most nutritious
and productive kinds of grass, including timothy, white clover, and
such other varieties as are well adapted to the particular nature and
condition of the soil, are none too many to be sown together, for pasture
or meadow. Five quarts of timothy, three of white clover, six of orchard
grass, and three of red-top (if the ground is quite moist), or other
grass suited to the soil, are about the proper quantities and proportions
for general use, on an acre of land. Such a mixture, upon a rich soil,
will produce fully twice as much feed as any one kind upon the same soil.
White clover produces a greater quantity and better quality of milk and
butter than any of the other varieties of grass, and the quantity of feed
produced by such a mixture, will astonish any person not acquainted with
the facts. Besides producing much more abundantly, they furnish something
of a variety of feed, which is greatly beneficial in the manufacture of
both milk and flesh. Weeds injure the flavor of milk and butter, and
should never be in the food for cows. An acre of rich soil, well seeded
with a good selection and variety of perennial grasses, will produce six
tons of well-cured hay in one season; by mowing twice, and, by early
cutting, this can be done without difficulty. In my own experience, the
first mowing has given at the rate of full four tons per acre, and the
second, somewhat injured by drouth, two tons. Some writers recommend
the sowing of one or more of the rank growing annuals, as being more
productive; but a careful consideration of the subject, accompanied by
experiments, discloses the fact that the extra expense of preparing the
ground and seeding annually, overbalances any increased quantity of feed
produced, especially when the coarser and less nutritious nature of the
feed is taken into the account. There is nothing suited to this climate
and latitude, that will answer a better purpose as food for stock, than
such perennials as timothy, red-top, orchard-grass, blue-grass, the
clovers, etc., when sown upon a rich soil, thick enough to completely
cover the ground and to insure fine, soft hay, when cut at the proper
time and well cured. I have omitted red clover in the mixture of grasses,
because soils adapted to that variety will produce white clover equally
as well, and in about the same quantity, while the white gives a much
better flavor to milk and butter, and an increased quantity. Blue-grass,
either green or cured, is excellent feed for cattle, but is unprofitable
on account of the small product, and that coming only in the fore part
of the season, falling, as it does, just at the time when fresh feed is
most needed. Red and white clover may be advantageously mixed with the
true grasses, in many localities where the soil is suitable, though the
clovers are likely to “run out” in a couple of years, and leave their
places to be filled with inferior fodder plants.
MILKING THREE TIMES A DAY.
During the heat of summer, the cow should be milked three times a day,
at regular intervals—about five o’clock in the morning, one in the
afternoon, and at nine in the evening. The quantity of milk and butter
is considerably increased, and the quality improved, by this practice.
The milk is injured by remaining in the udder through the heat of the
day, and the cow is made uncomfortable, which, of necessity, diminishes
her usefulness. When cows are milked but twice a day in hot weather, the
udder becomes too much heated and feverish, and the milk is in a similar
condition—the cream seems to be melted, the milk soon becomes sour,
the cream does not rise well, and the butter is soft and oily. These
difficulties, almost universally attending butter-making at this time of
the year, are mostly overcome by the practice of milking three times a
day, and the cow being near at hand, it is a small matter.
The length of time a cow should be milked, will depend on her
capabilities for giving milk a longer or shorter time. Some will give
milk the year round, while others will “go dry” three or four months, or
longer, in spite of all efforts to keep them in milk a longer period.
But, as a rule, it is better for a cow to go dry some eight weeks,
giving time for fleshing up a little, and gaining strength for another
season. The cow will be more vigorous, and the flow of milk more abundant
afterward.
THE ELLSWORTH OR “BARRE” SYSTEM OF FEEDING.
BY D. D. SLADE, CHESTNUT HILL, MASS.
My own experience, as well as that of others, has taught me that a cow
properly fed twice a day, will give more milk, and be in better condition
than when fed three times, or more frequently. This plan, which is known
as the “Barre” system of feeding, may be adopted throughout the year,
although it has been chiefly applied to the winter months, in the region
where it has been most extensively pursued.
The poorest quality of fodder is given first, at the commencement of each
meal, and before this is entirely consumed, another foddering of a better
quality is placed before the cow, and finally a third, of the best hay.
After this is consumed, roots, grain, etc., may be given immediately.
In this way, the animal employs on an average about two hours at a
meal—which occurs only twice during the day, with an interval of from six
to seven hours between the morning and evening. Water, always slightly
warmed, in cold weather, is offered at once, and it will be found that
the cow will not drink so freely after she has begun to chew the cud. No
food should be given between the meals, which should be at regular hours,
and served with punctuality. So long as she chews her cud, which in the
well-fed cow is about six hours, we can rest assured that her digestive
organs have work enough before them, and that we cannot reasonably call
upon them to do more.
The why and the wherefore of this system of feeding, which we heartily
advocate, are well told in the words of Mr. Ellsworth, the originator.
“The idea that a cow needs only two meals a day during the winter season,
as long as she is kept upon hay or other dried fodder, notwithstanding
the fact that she will eat much oftener, when obtaining her living from
the pasture, may appear to the casual observer, to be contradictory to
itself; but on a closer investigation we shall notice a rational, and I
believe satisfactory reason for it. Of all the elements of which grass is
composed, by far the larger part is water, which must render it much more
bulky than an equal amount of hay, and for this reason, more is required
to supply the wants of the system. During the season, therefore, when the
cow must live by her own exertions, she must labor most of the time to
obtain the requisite amount of nourishment, which she is not required to
do while in the barn. We must not forget, also, that pastures in general
are kept down so close during the greater part of the summer, that only
by continual labor can her wants be satisfied.”
The same rules are applicable to the soiling of the cow during the summer
months, the only difference being that green food is given in the place
of dry. This may consist of rye, oats, barley, millet, or Hungarian
grass, corn, English grass, etc., cut while in the milk. It will
frequently be found that a proportion of dried hay will also at times be
highly relished, and may be essential to allay any excessive looseness of
the bowels, which may be produced by the succulent food.
During the time of eating, the milking and other necessary work may be
done about the cow house, so that time may be thus economized.
As to the requisite amount of food, it may be taken as a safe rule,
that a milch cow demands in food, three per cent of her weight. An
average cow, then, will require from eighteen to twenty pounds of hay,
in addition to a peck or two of roots per day, or the equivalent of this
amount in green food during the summer months.
If the hay is good, and has been properly cured, or if rowen can be
given, then there will be little or no demand for grain in any form. If
otherwise, from one to two quarts of Indian meal, with two quarts of
shorts per day, should be fed out, if we are to expect a good flow of
milk. We have found excellent results to follow the practice of stirring
the meal and shorts, or a portion of these, into a bucket of warm water,
and offering this mixture immediately after the animal has consumed her
dry food, and before any roots are eaten. This extra amount of fluid will
be greedily taken, in this way, without any interference with a liberal
supply of water at the end of the meal. Salt, at all times, should be
accessible to the cow, and perhaps this article may be best supplied by
placing a large lump of rock salt in the manger, to be licked as her
wants may require.
Taking Central New England, as before remarked, as the latitude of
experimentation, it will be found that one square rod of oats, Hungarian
grass, barley, rye, and similar grasses, in proper condition, growing
on land in a high state of cultivation, is amply sufficient for a cow
for one day. Or in other words, to be within perfectly safe bounds, and
considering the chances of partial failure, we may say, that under the
conditions above mentioned, forty square rods, or one quarter of an acre,
will produce ample food for one cow for thirty-five days. On this basis,
upon one acre can be grown soiling material sufficient to keep a cow
through the year, allowing also, a liberal amount of roots. How is this
to be done?
We may assume that a man takes possession of a place on the first of
April, which is the customary time in New England. Let him select an acre
of the land most suitable to the purpose in view. Let him set apart forty
square rods, or one quarter of it, for summer soiling, twenty square
rods for the growth of roots, and the remaining one hundred square rods
for crops, to be properly cured for winter use. The land having been
thoroughly prepared, that is, in high tilth, sow as early in April as
possible, on ten square rods, oats, or spring rye, at the rate of four
bushels to the acre. This will be fit to cut, for summer soiling, in the
first week of July.
On the fifteenth to twentieth of April, sow the next ten rods in a
similar manner. This will be ready to cut about the fifteenth of July. On
the first of May, sow oats or barley on the next ten rods, which will be
fit for cropping August first.
On the tenth to the fifteenth of May put in the next five rods in drills,
flat corn at the rate of three bushels to the acre, and a week later the
remaining five rods are to be treated in a similar manner. This will give
succulent food up to September.
As soon as the first ten rods of land, which were cleared of oats by the
tenth of July, has been again prepared properly, sow Hungarian grass
at the same rate as before stated. Do the same also with the next lot,
cleared of oats by the first of August, putting in barley, however, in
place of millet, as this is not injured by the early frosts. Barley may
also be sown on the lot which was cropped about the tenth of August, or
if this grain has already occupied the land, we may substitute corn,
using a stimulating fertilizer to give it a rapid growth. In this way,
we shall have a succession of green food up to November, augmented also
by the tops of the roots when thinned out or when harvested. The larger
varieties of the sweet corn may be substituted for the flat, and is
perhaps better relished, although not affording perhaps so large a yield.
The twenty square rods devoted to root culture must receive attention as
early in the season as possible—certainly by the first of May. The ground
having been deeply plowed or spaded, and thoroughly manured, should be
made perfectly level. The large sugar beet and the mangold wurzel are the
most valuable for the milch cow, and may be sown at the rate of about
six pounds to the acre. During their growth, careful attention should
be given to them by keeping them free from weeds, and the surface of
the ground loose and fresh. A good yield would give an average of about
six hundred and fifty bushels to the acre, which will be eighty bushels
for the plot of twenty square rods, and allowing the cow one-third of
a bushel per day for the eight months of dry food. The roots should be
secured from frost by placing them in the cellar or in deep pits well
protected. The hundred rods which is to be devoted to the winter feeding,
must be put down to oats at the same time, and exactly in the same manner
as the first ten rods for summer soiling. Cut these when in their most
succulent condition, which will be probably from the fifth to the tenth
of July. Cure them well, and house or stack them in a suitable manner.
The land having been again suitably prepared, the preceding crop must be
at once followed by Hungarian grass, a bushel and a half to the acre,
which will be fit for cutting as soon as the head is formed, which will
be in about six weeks from the time of sowing. Cure it as far as possible
in the cock, which will render it more nutritious.
The one hundred square rods being again cleared and put in order during
the autumn, sow winter rye at the rate of three bushels to the acre.
This will be ready to cut in the spring, and will afford green food much
earlier than in any other way for soiling. If there is a surplus of any
of the green crops, convert it into hay for winter use.
From the two croppings of the one hundred square rods, treated in the
above manner, a fair yield will be a ton and a quarter of oats cured
as hay, with an equal amount of Hungarian grass. Thus we have two and
one-half tons of fodder, which will be amply sufficient for one cow
through the eight months in which she is not receiving the green crops,
allowing her the amount of hay per day which we have stated as necessary
in conjunction with the roots and grain, in the quantities before
mentioned.
Of course, where the feeding commences in April, if the place be taken
in that month, food must be bought by the owner to last until the summer
soiling in July. In the succeeding year, however, the crop of winter rye
will come in early, to be used in conjunction with the dried fodder of
the previous summer.
COW STABLED IN THE TOWN.
Again, there are cases where a single cow may be kept with profit and
advantage, and that, too, in perfect health, without the agency of
land, in the immediate suburbs of a town or city, or even within the
very precincts of a city. It is requisite, for these conditions, that
provision should be made to allow the animal to breathe fresh air, and to
enjoy a certain amount of sunlight daily. Without these none should be
kept. Exercise is not essential to the well-being of the milch cow; she
is an animal of repose, and if she is offered every effort to ruminate,
will be perfectly contented, and will do her duty. Attention to the best
possible condition of the skin, as regards cleanliness, is very important
when so closely housed.
The food which, under these circumstances, must be purchased, can be
obtained with much economy, on account of the propinquity to the places
of sale; and although we do not advocate the use of brewers’ grain, or of
any other cheap articles which are too often substituted for the natural
food of the cow, viz., grass, green or dry—a small quantity, especially
when supplemented by the vegetable refuse from the house table, may be
advantageously employed conjointly with good hay.
Finally, it may be said that no animal better repays care and attention,
and can with more truth be called the poor man’s friend, than the cow.
[Illustration]
FACTS REFUTE PREJUDICE.
BY D. B. CHAPMAN, NEW LONDON, CT.
When I was a boy it was the prevailing opinion in the section of country
where I was raised, that it was better that a cow should be rather thin
in flesh at the time of calving than otherwise. There was but very little
grain fed in winter, to any stock in that section, except to working
oxen. Cows in milk were fed hay, while dry cows, and young stock, were
fed on straw or corn stalks. The result was that at the time of calving,
cows were generally thin enough to conform to the popular idea of a
proper condition. Cows giving a large yield of milk were scarce enough
in those days, and it was very seldom that you would meet one that would
yield ten quarts of milk per day (beer measure), during the flush of
feed. My faith in the theory, that a cow should be thin in flesh at the
time of calving, received a very severe shock, very soon after I became
the owner of one, and experience and observation have only served to
confirm my doubts of its correctness.
In the spring of 1848, I purchased my first cow. I came across her some
twenty miles from home. She had just calved, and displayed a very large
udder. Her owner warranted her to give twelve quarts of milk per day, and
to be, in every respect, a good family cow. The cow suited my fancy in
every particular, save one, she was too fat. But having nine points in
her favor, I did not feel disposed to forego her purchase for the want
of the tenth. When I drove her home, the adverse criticism on her was
immense, solely on account of her condition. Said an old farmer to me:
“That is a fancy cow, just suited for some rich man, who can afford to
indulge his fancy, and expend for her keeping, twice as much as the value
of her milk. You will find that you have got to keep her in just the
condition that she is now in, or you will get no milk. If you do not keep
her in this condition, you will find she will shrink in milk, before she
shrinks in flesh, and she won’t give half as much, on the same keeping,
as she would if she was no fatter than my cows.”
I must own, that after listening to this and that criticism in the same
strain, I felt a little sick of my bargain, and would have willingly sold
her at a discount, but no purchaser appearing, I concluded to make the
best of a bad bargain.
My purchase was made April second. Twelve hundred pounds of hay furnished
her with feed until the eighteenth of May. I then hired a pasture, for
fifteen dollars, where I kept her until November, when I sold her.
I found that, although the cow lost flesh under my keeping, and a good
deal of it too, she gave quite as much milk as she was recommended to
give, and at the time she was sold, her account stood as follows, no
account having been made of the milk used in the family, then consisting
of three persons:
CR.
By sale of Milk, at 6 cents per quart $74.20
do. Calf 5.00
do. Cow, November 1 18.00
------ $97.20
DR.
To purchase, April 2d $35.00
do. Hay 12.00
do. Service 0.50
do. Pasture 15.00
------ $62.50
------
Net Profit $34.70
I was so well pleased with this result, notwithstanding the unfavorable
circumstance of having started with a fat cow, that the next spring I
repurchased her at the same price paid the spring previous. But instead
of a fat cow then, she was thin enough to afford a good study of animal
anatomy. She had had no other feed than corn stalks, for the two months
that she had been dry, and was as much thinner than when I sold her; as
she was at that time thinner than when I first bought her. In fact, she
had been subjected to a gradual system of depletion for a year.
I sold her on the first of October, following, when her account stood
as follows, no account having been made of the milk used in the family,
numbering three persons, as before:
DR.
To purchase $35.00
Hay 12.00
Service 0.50
Meal 6.00
Pasture, the same as the previous year 15.00
------- $68.50
CR.
By sale of Milk, at 6 cents per quart $51.30
do. Calf, two weeks old 3.00
do. Cow, October 1 12.00
------- $66.30
------
Loss $2.20
This difference in profit was occasioned solely by the difference of the
yield of her milk in the two seasons. The yield for the second season
averaged full three quarts per day less than the first, and, at the same
time, the quality of the milk was deteriorated in the same proportion as
the quantity.
This was my first lesson, acquired by experience. At the same time, I
learned another by observation. The two combined added materially to my
stock of knowledge.
A neighbor of mine, a German, in the month of January, 1849, purchased
a heifer, three years of age the coming spring. She had been kept poor
from the time she was weaned. At two years of age she had dropped her
first calf, and through her first season of milk had given but little
promise as a milker. She had just been dried when he purchased her, and
he, without any previous knowledge of the care of cows, commenced feeding
her according to his instincts. He fed her six quarts of meal per day, in
addition to all the hay she would eat. This system of feeding continued
until about the twenty-fifth of March, when she calved. At the time of
calving she was in better condition than much of the beef sold in our
markets.
About the same time that his cow calved I repurchased mine. The feed of
the two, thereafter, was very nearly alike, except that his cow had a
feed of six quarts of meal per day, while mine had only two. His fat cow
doubled on the quantity of milk that she had given the year before, when
she came in poor, while my poor cow, with extra feed, fell short more
than a third of her yield of the year before, when she came in, in good
condition.
At that time I do not remember to have ever seen a work on chemistry, and
knew nothing of its application; but the knowledge acquired, led to the
formation of a theory in my mind, on which I have since acted, and which,
I believe, has a scientific basis, to wit: “The fat laid on the body of
an in-calf cow, is a store from which nature draws a large portion of the
material which increases and enriches the subsequent flow of milk—a store
from which she, by legitimate processes, produces oleo-stearine in the
shape of butter.”
Acting upon this theory, I have endeavored to apportion to my cows a
uniform daily ration, occasionally varying the material, which, although
it may not sustain the cow in full flesh during the greatest flow of
milk, seems to renew it during the period of the lesser flow, and render
them in good condition at the time of calving. This system of uniform
feeding, to my mind, pays better than it does to feed heavily while in
milk, and then lightly when dry, because it furnishes a large resource
of fat, on which to draw at a time when to consume sufficient food to
sustain the entire flow of milk capable of being produced, might imperil
health; and I feel quite sure that a certain richness is thereby imparted
to the milk, that no amount of feeding will draw from a poor cow. In the
autumn of 1877 I purchased a grade heifer reputed to be seven-eighths
Jersey and one-eighth Ayrshire. She had dropped her first calf the spring
previous, when only two years old. She was then represented as yielding
three quarts of milk per day, and due to calve April the sixth. To
account for the small yield of milk, her owner said she had been kept on
poor pasture and milked by careless boys, who had not been particular to
milk her clean.
That she had been kept on poor pasture her appearance abundantly
confirmed. She came into my possession during the root harvest, in
November. I commenced by feeding to her three bushels of rutabaga tops,
or of beet tops, three pounds of corn meal, together with all the dry hay
she would eat each day.
ONE YEAR’S EXPENSES AND RETURNS.
The cost of keeping the cow from November first, 1877, to June first,
1878, was as follows:
150 pounds of Indian Meal, at $1.40 $ 2.10
380 ” Ship Stuff, at $1.35 5.13
110 ” Oil Meal, at $1.30 1.82
4140 ” Roots, at $8.00 per ton 16.56
3392 ” Hay, at $20 33.92
1 peck Salt 0.25
------
$59.78
The cost from June first to November first, 1878, was as follows:
1530 pounds of Hay, at $20 $15.30
225 ” Oil meal, at $1.30 2.92
470 ” Bran, at $1.35 6.35
Salt 0.25
Service 2.00
----- $26.82
------
Making a total cost of $86.60
for the year, counting nothing for the garden truck consumed during the
summer and autumn. This, with the exception of the corn stalks, would
have been consigned to the compost heap, had she not eaten it, so that
its only value to me was its value for compost. But allowing that for the
purpose of feed it was equal in value to its equivalent in hay, and that
my winter ration of hay had been continued through the year, her total
cost of keeping would have been, in round numbers, one hundred and four
dollars.
In the roots fed to her during the winter, were included the waste
and parings of vegetables used in a family of ten persons, which was
sometimes no inconsiderable item. These were always thrown into the feed
basket, and just enough fresh roots sliced to make the required weight.
After the roots stored in the cellar were exhausted no account was made
of this item. I make this statement simply to show that every item of
feed was entered at its full value, into the cost of the keeping.
Now for the other side. Although the cow was quite thin when I bought
her, yet under this system of care and feeding, she was estimated to
have gained two hundred pounds in weight by the time she calved, on the
fifteenth of April, 1878, and of this weight she had not lost more than
seventy-five pounds at the end of the year, November first. When I bought
her she was represented as yielding three quarts of milk per day. Her
yield of milk weighed on the first day exactly five and three-quarter
pounds. At the end of three weeks, it had increased to eleven pounds
per day, and continued at this figure with scarcely any interruption
until the first of February. It then rapidly fell off, until by the
twenty-fifth of that month, she yielded only seven pounds per day. I then
commenced milking her once a day, and the milking on the fourth day after
weighed only four and a half pounds. I continued milking her until the
fifteenth of March, when I stopped, the weight of the last milking being
only one and three-quarter pounds. On the tenth or April she calved. I
let her calf suckle her until it was four weeks old, when it was sold
for veal. On the seventh of May her yield of milk was twenty-two pounds.
It averaged about that figure until she got a full feed of pea vines in
June, when it ran up as high as twenty-seven pounds. In July it fell off
some, and continued to run from twenty to twenty-three pounds until the
middle of August. It then gradually diminished to the first of November,
at which time she was yielding thirteen pounds of milk per day. I find,
by referring to my diary, that her total yield of milk from the time I
purchased her until she calved, was one thousand and sixty-seven pounds,
equal to four hundred and eighty-four quarts, reckoning thirty-four
ounces to the quart. Milk was then selling, in this vicinity, at six
cents per quart, making a value of twenty-six dollars and four cents.
From the time she calved until the first of November, her total yield of
milk was three thousand seven hundred and seventy-seven pounds, equal
to one thousand seven hundred and seventy-seven quarts, at five cents,
eighty-eight dollars and eighty-five cents; sale of calf, six dollars and
fifty-cents; making a net profit of seventeen dollars and thirty-nine
cents, to say nothing of the growth of the cow, or the value of her
manure, which was an ample compensation for the care of keeping.
Had I estimated the value of her milk at the retail price, I should add
one cent per quart for summer, and two cents per quart for winter. The
next year this same cow, with the increase of the equivalent of one and
a half pounds of meal per day, to allow for her increased growth, and a
slight deviation in the matter of feed during the summer, whereby she
obtained more green food, of which I shall speak hereafter, increased her
profit almost forty per cent.
GARGET.
Of one thing I am very careful, and that is, not to allow the inflowing
milk, previous to calving, to harden in the udder, and in all my long
experience, in owning cows, I have never had a case of garget. When I was
a boy about twelve years of age, my father purchased a very large milker
for those days. I noticed that the right hind quarter of her udder was
much smaller than the other, and yielded a correspondingly less quantity
of milk. After she had been dried off, and the time approached for her to
calve, I observed that this same quarter of her udder became very much
more distended than the others. Her whole udder was very much distended,
but this quarter excessively so. As her period of calving was delayed,
and her udder became more inflamed, producing, evidently, great pain to
the cow, I asked the privilege of milking her, and was denied. At the
same time I was given to understand that it was the worst possible thing
that could be done for the cow; that it was necessary that her udder
should become thus distended, in order to give it the capacity to contain
the flow of milk after calving; that should she be milked before calving,
the yield after calving would be very much lessened, etc. By the time she
calved, her udder was one indurated mass, and that particular quarter of
it so much inflamed that she could not bear to have the calf touch it.
In the course of time, however, by copious applications of cold water,
and various liniments, the inflammation was reduced, but that particular
section of the udder, which had been sufficiently distended to hold
her whole yield, was shrunken to its old dimensions, and was no larger
than when I first saw her. When the time approached for her to drop her
next calf, I took the responsibility of clandestinely milking her, so
that when she calved there was no inflamed udder, there was no fussing
with liniments. Its four quarters were now evenly developed; the only
difference was the former shrunken quarter was larger, if anything, than
the others, and, throughout the season, the yield of milk, from the same
keeping, was essentially increased over the yield of the previous year. I
never disclosed the secret, however, until I was grown up. But I acquired
a very useful lesson which I applied in my practice long before the
theory that it was best to milk a cow previous to calving was generally
adopted by owners around me.
TETHERING.
A professional friend of mine is the owner of three horses and two
imported cows, all of which are kept in very high condition. He informs
me that for several years, with the exception of one year, two and one
half acres of land have furnished all the hay consumed by the five
animals, together with pasturage for one cow; the other cow being dry
during the summer, is pastured in the country. His land is naturally
good grass land, being moist, well drained, and perfectly smooth. The
apparatus for tethering his cow, when at pasture, consists of a pole or
joist, the short end of which is weighted, swiveled on an iron upright,
standing, when in position, about four feet above the ground, giving the
apparatus the appearance of a model of an old-fashioned well sweep. The
halter being attached to the upper end, is always above her back while
feeding. This arrangement allows the cow the range of a circuit thirty
feet in diameter. The upright is removed to the arc of the circle at
morning and noon. In this manner she traverses the length of the lot,
four hundred feet, in fourteen days, when she is brought back to the
starting point, to repeat the journey again. In this manner, twelve
thousand feet of land is made to furnish pasturage for one cow during
the entire summer, and besides this, she has no feed whatever. The cow
is always in good condition, and the ground never appears very closely
cropped, and I have no doubt that were she restricted to one quarter of
an acre, or ten thousand eight hundred and ninety feet, she would still
be better fed than most cows that are at pasture. The droppings of the
cow are daily removed from this range, so that she always has a clean
feeding ground. All the manure made by the five animals is annually
returned to this lot, and, in addition, the owner informs me, once in
three years he gives it a dressing of a ton of ground bone.
PEARL MILLET.
After reading of Mr. Peter Henderson’s experiment with Pearl Millet, as
described in the “American Agriculturist,” I determined to make a trial
with it myself. Accordingly, last year, I sowed an area of eighteen
square rods with it, in drills, fourteen inches apart; six rods were set
apart to be cut and dried for fodder. The product of the other twelve
rods was fed green. On the twentieth of June, a month after sowing, the
growth measured about three feet in hight. On this date we commenced
cutting it, and feeding to the cow all she would eat. She ate it with a
greater apparent relish than any other green feed that had been given
her. The cutting was finished on the twenty-fifth of July, on which
day the last cutting measured about four feet in hight. The second
cutting was commenced on the twenty-seventh of July, and finished on the
twenty-second of August, the growth averaging nearly three and a half
feet. The third cutting was commenced on the twenty-third and finished
on the thirty-first of August. The growth was about two feet at the
beginning of the cutting, but not more than ten inches at the finish. The
fourth and last cutting was commenced on the sixteenth, and finished on
the twenty-first of September, after which the ground appeared exhausted,
and no further growth was made. The twelve rods cut and fed green yielded
feed sufficient for seventy-five days, aside from her usual ration of
bran or oil meal, while the product from the six rods, cut and fed dry,
only two cuttings being made, was sufficient to feed her for thirty-four
days, making a total feed for one hundred and nine days, from eighteen
rods of ground; at which rate it would require sixty and one-quarter rods
of ground to furnish forage for a year.
AN EXCELLENT COMPOST.
The only stable manure I use on my crops is that made by my cow. All my
other fertilizers are artificially produced. In the course of the year,
in prosecuting my regular business, I render some two hundred thousand
pounds of tallow. This is all done by boiling it with sulphuric acid.
The acid attacks and decomposes the animal tissue, leaving the rendered
tallow floating on its surface. A part of the dissolved animal tissue,
together with the bones that are sometimes smuggled in with the rough
fat, settles to the bottom of the tanks, and a part remains dissolved
in the acid. This spent acid, together with the deposit in the bottom
of the tanks, is the source of all my nitrogen, except what may be in
the manure from the cow, as well as a portion of my phosphorous. I have
occasion to use considerable of the potash of commerce in some of my
manufactures. For my land, I make of this a saturated solution, and then
dry it, by stirring into it a mixture of equal parts of ground plaster
and sifted coal ashes. This, in a few days, becomes sulphate of potash,
lime, and coal ashes, at least I judge that it does, for it loses all its
causticity.
In preparing my fertilizers, I mix the product of my tanks with loam,
near the place to be planted; this, in the spring, is dug over and mixed
with the manure from the stable. The effect of this mixing is to make
the manure very fine in a very short time. After plowing, this compost
is spread upon the land, and harrowed in. I then follow with ground
bone, which costs me, delivered at my place, bolted, twenty-five dollars
per ton, at the rate of twelve hundred pounds to the acre, and with the
potash mixture, at the rate of two hundred and forty pounds to the acre,
which is also harrowed in. In distributing the potash, I distribute more
of it where I intend to plant peas or potatoes, and less where I intend
to plant corn, squashes, and turnips. In distributing the bone, I reverse
this. It is on a light, sandy loam, fertilized in this manner, with an
excess of nitrogen, no doubt, that I expect, the coming summer, to raise
enough feed for a cow on less than half an acre of ground. The land on
which my experiment was tried last year was a turned sod that had had no
manure of any kind for more than ten years. This year it will be tried on
land that was manured as above last year.
[Illustration]
A WOMAN’S SUCCESS AND EXPERIENCE.
BY MRS. MARY L. TAYLOR, NORTH VERNON, INDIANA.
My success in keeping the family cow is mainly due to the superior sense
of that animal in coming into being in a latitude where a cow can live
with as little care and protection, and where the face of unplowed and
unharrowed nature furnishes as much food for her as any other; latitude
thirty-nine.
My cow is a scrub—cost twenty dollars; had her calf on the fourteenth of
February, 1879, and we complimented the saint on whose day she came by
calling her Valentine.
HOW WE MANAGED THE CALF.
I put the calf in a pen made in the fence corner and covered with a few
old boards, and let the cow in to her every night—first taking from the
cow what milk we needed for our family of four persons. I left her with
the calf all night, and in the morning milked what the calf had left for
me. This was not much after the first two weeks, and after two more weeks
I only wasted my time at milking in the morning. I parted with the calf
at three months old for eight dollars, and laid this sum by as my capital
to draw against for the cow’s winter keeping.
My farm is half an acre in extent, and all of it, except the space
occupied by the cottage and a small garden, is lawn, and is well set in
Blue-grass, with a sprinkling of Orchard-grass.
SUMMER MANAGEMENT.
I sold my lawn mower and put a short rope around my cow’s horns. To
this I fastened the chain of an old chain-pump. The pump had served its
day, and was now laid aside. This old pump-chain was about sixteen feet
long, and through the end of it I stuck an old iron garden stake into
the ground, and staked my cow out on the lawn. In the chain I put rings
one yard apart, and by running my garden stake through a ring nearer or
farther from the rope around the cow’s horns, I could give her a larger
or smaller circle to graze on, and so let her eat very near to evergreens
and other shrubbery without danger of having them injured. She pulled up
the stake several times at first, but the remedy for this came of itself.
In my desire to make her very secure, I had tied the rope around her
horns too tightly and made her head sore. She ceased pulling, and though
her head soon got well, she has never since pulled up the stake; so that
my mistake in fastening the rope, though it caused me self-reproaches at
the time, really proved a blessing in the end, for had she formed the
habit of pulling the stake up, I should have been forced to discontinue
staking her out for fear of her destroying the shrubbery. My cow seems
to have a spite at shrubbery proportioned to its beauty, and this spite
seems intensified against such plants as she cannot eat. A young cedar,
for instance, she will never pass without trying to demolish it with her
horns. By means of the rings in my chain, I could stake her so that she
could eat up to the edge of an evergreen without being able to touch it
with her horns, and I found the horns the only part that the shrubbery
had to fear, for she never yet has tried to destroy anything with her
heels.
My lawn, under the care of this new one-cow lawn-mower, became the
admiration and envy of the whole neighborhood. The chickens followed her
and scattered her droppings, so that the lawn was always clean. I found
it a great improvement on the old hand lawn-mower, and much less labor,
for the staking out was far less trouble than running the mower. Besides,
I sold the old machine for almost half the price I paid for the cow. But,
strange as it seems to me now, I at first felt a little ashamed of my new
mower, for I got in the practice of staking the cow on the front lawn at
night, and moving her to the back lawn early in the morning.
She did her work so silently in the darkness that my neighbors wondered
much that in so well-kept a lawn they never heard the click of the
lawn-mower.
We have no storms in the summer in this latitude from which a cow needs
any more protection than a tree affords. When it rained I milked her
under the shelter of a beech.
In June, I rented a one-quarter acre lot for two dollars, and for one
dollar hired it plowed and laid off in furrows a little over two feet
apart. In these furrows I dropped corn, the grains two to four inches
apart. I hired it plowed once with a shovel plow. This cost seventy-five
cents. At the first frost, I had it cut and put up in small shocks. A
woman that does washing for me, and occasionally chores about the house,
did this at forty cents a day. She was several days at it, but during
the time performed other work about the house. I think she spent about
two solid days on it. This corn-fodder, with few large ears on it, but a
great many nubbins, made my fodder and grain for the cow for the winter.
Later in the fall, when the corn-stalks were thoroughly cured, I had
them placed against poles set on crotches around the place where the
cow was sheltered during the winter. The stalks were leaned against the
poles from both sides, and made a sloping roof both ways, so as to shed
snow and rain. From these poles I gave the cow an armful of this corn
and fodder night and morning, and though the snow did sometimes lodge on
them, and make my mittens cold, I could generally find a spot on one side
or the other that was clear of snow. This work of putting up the fodder
for winter use cost about two dollars.
My cow had been used to “slops” and meal, and did not take kindly to
whole corn at first. I was advised to husk the corn, and get it ground;
but by feeding her a few small or broken, or soft ears from my hand, she
soon became eager for it, and has learned to grind it as well as the
mill, and at less cost of going to and from, to say nothing of the toll.
But even if she was not as good a corn crusher as the mill-stones, there
would be no loss, for my fowls follow her faithfully, and pick up every
broken grain that is dropped; so the miller’s toll that I save keeps me
in chickens and eggs. Now that the cow had come to eat whole corn, I was
told that she would muss over the fodder, hunting for the nubbins, and
waste the stalks; but by sprinkling a little brine on the stalks when
she became dainty, I found I could make her eat them as closely as was
desirable.
A WINTER SHELTER.
I had no stable. The cow stood out in all the storms until late in
December. The hair grew very thick, almost like a buffalo robe, and she
did not seem to mind the cold. There was an old chicken house on the
place, standing on posts about five feet high. It was in a hollow, and
was sheltered by evergreens on the north and west. As I pulled up her
stake one night in a drizzle to let her go under the tree where I milked
her, she started on the gallop for this house, and from that time it was
her winter couch. There I milked and fed her. I tied the chain around one
of the corner posts, so as to leave her the choice of the shelter of the
building or of exposure to the storm at her discretion, and I must say
that she often surprised me by seeming as fond as a child of standing
out in the rain. Under this coop I fed her fodder; the stalks she left,
littered down her bed, and I had more manure in the spring than I had
ever had before. A boy spread it from a wheelbarrow at twenty-five cents
a day. The spring before I paid fifty cents a load for the manure, and
two dollars and fifty cents a day for the hauling.
ABOUT SALTING.
I never fed the cow any salt for health during the summer, but she kept
healthy, and the butter came. In the fall, I began feeding her the house
slops, night and morning, and when she did not eat them freely I put a
little salt in. When I thought she was not eating her fodder up clean
enough, I would sprinkle on a little brine with an old broom. I never fed
salt for her good, but sometimes for mine. In the fall, when I wanted her
to eat up weeds before they went to seed, I used occasionally to sprinkle
with brine such spots as I wanted eaten off closely. I never could make
my old lawn-mower cut off weeds any closer than grass, but this new
lawn-mower would eat these weed patches to the collars of the roots.
My cow became used to this kind of life, makes me no trouble, has
furnished the milk and butter for our family of four the whole year, and
some butter to send to my friends, and a little to sell. I have fodder
enough from my quarter acre to keep her until grass is abundant, and have
one dollar and twenty cents of the price of my calf still on hand.
I might go on and tell you how I used to buy hay at a high price for
wintering my cow, and quantities of bran, brewers’ grains and corn-meal;
how the hay always made her costive and hide-bound, and how she never
ate it with half the relish which she does the corn fodder; how I found
it an unladylike act to raise my foot and force the garden stake into
the ground, and so contrived a smaller iron that I could more gracefully
plant, and that no unruly cow ever could pull up; how with this new stake
I can safely leave her on the lawn all night with the fullest confidence
of finding her in the morning just where I left her, how when at first
the cow got loose and wandered to the garden, I discovered that the taste
of the butter was disagreeably affected by her eating certain herbs, and
how it was very pleasantly flavored by others; how I am cultivating these
herbs to make the sweetest and most golden butter; how—but dear me! for a
one-cow story it is already too long.
[Illustration: Fig. 23.—THE JERSEY COW “ABBIE.”]
UNDERDRAINING AND CARE OF MANURE.
BY H. H. HALL, NEW ORLEANS, LA.
Let us locate one acre of land on the thirty-eighth degree of north
latitude, midway across the continent, say near the City of St. Louis.
While under the intensive system of cultivation which will be pursued,
less land than one acre will ultimately be found sufficient to supply
the wants of one cow, it would not be advisable to begin with a less
quantity. That one acre is sufficient is opposed to the general opinion,
as witness the assertion of Mr. Schull, of Little Falls, N. Y., that
the land in pasturage and hay, requisite for the support of one cow,
is three acres, and this accords with the estimate of Mr. Carrington
for moderately good dairy farms in England. Colman says: Three acres
are required for a cow in Berkshire Co., Mass. Mr. Farrington, in the
Report of the American Dairymen’s Association says, four; while Mr. X. A.
Willard thinks that in Herkimer Co., N. Y., one and a half to two acres
will pasture one cow, and that in some exceptional cases one acre will
suffice.
True it is that these estimates take into consideration grass and hay
solely, and the treatment of the land is presumed to be that usually
pursued, viz.: scant allowance of manure, absence of subsoil drainage,
and consequently shallow cultivation.
But high manuring and deep cultivation are indispensable in view, viz.:
the obtaining the greatest quantity of dairy food from the least land.
And high cultivation, implying depth of soil, tilth, porosity and
aeration is impossible without subsoil drainage; nor in its absence does
manure produce its best effects. It is foreign to the purpose of this
article to elucidate the action of tile draining upon crops and soil.
The lasting and great benefit of the system is, to-day, a matter of such
plain fact, that no intelligent agriculturist will question it.
Therefore we begin by selecting an acre of land which affords the best
facilities for laying tile-drainage pipes. An easy slope with a good,
open outlet into ditch, run, or gulch, is all that is required. The
advantages of a sunny exposure are so obvious that, if possible, we
should choose land which trends to the south and east. The tile-draining
of one acre will necessitate an outlay of about twenty-five dollars; but
this expenditure is indispensable to the obtaining of the best results.
THE DUNG HEAP.
Truly did the German agriculturist, Schwerz, in seeing the fertile
streamlets oozing and trickling away from the exposed manure piles of
his opinionated countrymen, denominate the dung heap the “Fountainhead
of Benediction.” This, like other blessings, may but too readily be
perverted in its uses.
Impressed with the necessity of husbanding every part and portion of this
substratum of good agriculture, we choose between two distinct methods
of saving and utilizing the fluid and solid _dejecta_, viz.: the dry and
wet. In the former the _dejecta_ are commingled with such absorbents as
dry earth, leaves, straw, sawdust, etc.; in the latter, they are received
in a tank where they are mixed with sufficient water to stay loss by too
rapid fermentation. The application of the manure under either method is
respectively in its dry or in its liquid condition.
[Illustration: Fig. 24.—A COW STABLE WITH MANURE CELLAR.]
If the dry or absorbent method be adopted, it will be found advantageous
to locate the stable on a little declivity, so as to secure a manure
cellar with the least excavation.
Thus, in fig. 24, _C_ represents a manure cellar under the cow, with a
door at _K_ for removal of manure. The floor and walls, to a hight of
two feet, of this cellar should be cemented. The floor, on which the cow
stands, should be of two-inch oak plank, with a gutter behind, and a trap
to empty the contents of the gutter into the cellar. On level tracts
of ground the Flemish stable, as used in parts of the Brabant, and as
described in the following plan fig. 25, by Felix Villeroy (Manuel de
l’Eleveur de Bètes, â Comes, 6 Ed., p. 63), could be advantageously used
for one cow. In figure 25, _A_ is the place where the cow stands; _B_,
Passage for distributing food, etc.; _C_, Depression where the manure is
allowed to accumulate behind the cow; _D_, Cellar for roots; _E_, Hay
loft.
In this plan the floor _A_ and _C_ would require to be finished in brick
and cement, or concrete.
The warmth of the stable might, at times, develop a too rapid
fermentation of the manure. This would be checked by working the pile and
by forking it over.
[Illustration: Fig. 25.—SECTIONAL VIEW OF STABLE.]
But to secure perfect cleanliness, purity of air, and freedom of the
hay stored above from the odors of fermentation going on in the dung
heap, the manure would be better placed outside of the stable walls, as
suggested in figure 26 (see next page).
The bottom of the manure bin is only twenty-four inches below the
surface, as on level ground the labor of raising the manure from a deep
cellar would be disproportionate to the advantages of the depth. The
floor of the stall should be laid in brick and cement, or in concrete,
as should be the floor and lower walls of the manure bin. The floor
of the stall should be kept covered with dry earth, leaves, sawdust,
or spent tan-bark; and the bottom of the bin should be covered to the
depth of several inches, with similar absorbents. In the absence of
these to-be-preferred materials, weeds, straw, or other dry vegetable
refuse, may be used. With the gutter sufficiently inclined, the excessive
urine will of itself flow readily to the bin; the solid matter should
be removed twice daily, just before the cow is milked. The gutter
should be washed down with a pail of water daily, and sprinkled with
gypsum (sulphate of lime). The manure pile, as it increases, should be
constantly commingled with fresh absorbents. This is most readily and
economically done by baiting a pig with a handful of maize cast on the
manure in the bin. The lusty porker will go to the bottom of the pile,
if need be, for each grain, and by his energetic rooting and trampling,
will daily incorporate the materials in the most thorough manner.
[Illustration: Fig. 26.—PLAN OF STABLE WITH CISTERN AND MANURE BIN.]
On page 260 of Boussingault’s Rural Economy (Law’s translation) are some
very urgent warnings against the frequent turning of dung heaps. His
objection, Mr. Law thinks, should be limited to more than three turnings
of the dung. But this objection and limitation apply to horse manure, the
more active fermentation of which rapidly develops the highly volatile
salt known as carbonate of ammonia. There can hardly be too thorough a
working together of cow-manure, with its organic absorbents, particularly
when the working is accompanied by the compacting tread of animals.
The pile should be watched, and the slightest perception of the pungent
ammoniacal odor should be the signal for more absorbents, bearing in mind
that all organic matter thus composted becomes a valuable fertilizer,
and remembering that nothing should be left undone to increase to the
greatest extent possible the source of your anticipated blessings.
The manure bin should, of course, be so covered as to exclude rain and
sunshine.
If the liquid or dilute method be employed, in place of the manure bin in
the plan, it will be necessary to construct an underground cemented tank
or cistern, say of a depth of eight feet and diameter of six to seven
feet at the bottom. This tank must be provided with a pump for raising
the fluid, the tube of which should terminate in a strainer at about
twelve inches from the bottom of the tank. An opening should be left in
the top of the cistern for inspection, and for the insertion of a proper
implement to stir the sediment. The pump should rise sufficiently high to
permit the pumping of the fluid directly into a tank on wheels used for
the distribution thereof in the fields. A condemned watering cart, which
could probably be purchased cheaply, would be an excellent instrument for
this distribution. Sulphate of iron, green vitriol, should be freely used
to change the carbonate of ammonia into the sulphate, thereby obtaining a
fixed, instead of a highly volatile salt.
[Illustration]
KEEPING A COW IN A VILLAGE STABLE.
BY ORANGE JUDD, FLUSHING, L. I.
A business man of New York, living in one of the neighboring villages,
being troubled to get good milk for young children in his family, took
our advice the latter part of the winter and, so to speak, went into the
dairy business on his own account. The result will be instructive to
tens of thousands of families in cities and villages. He has no pasture
grounds, the only convenience being a roomy stall in a carriage barn,
with opportunity for the cow to sun herself and take limited exercise in
a small area, say fifteen by twenty feet, at the side of the barn, and
this was seldom used. The stall is kept clean and neat, with fresh straw
litter, and the cow has remained in excellent health and vigor. Chewing
her cud and manufacturing milk seem to give all the exercise needed. Her
feed has been bale hay, cut in a small hay-cutter, and mixed wet with
corn-meal, bran, and shorts, with some uncooked potato parings, cabbage
leaves, left over rice, oatmeal, etc., from the kitchen.
A laborer is paid one dollar a week to milk and feed and brush her night
and morning, and take care of the stable, and he is allowed any excess
of milk she gives over twelve quarts a day. He prepares a mess for her
noon feed, which is given by one of the boys at school when he comes
home to lunch. The cow is a grade, probably three-fourths Jersey and
one-fourth common blood. Her milk is rich, yields abundant cream, and, as
the owner’s family say, “Is worth fully double any milk we ever got from
the best milk dealers.” One neighboring family gladly takes six quarts
a day at seven cents a quart, and would willingly pay much more if it
were asked, and other families would be happy to get some of it at ten
cents a quart; but six quarts are kept for home use, and it is valued far
above seven cents a quart, and worth more than that amount in the saving
of butter in cooking, making puddings, etc. So it is a very low estimate
to call the whole milk worth seven cents a quart. No one could deprive
our business friend or his family of their good, home produced milk, if
it cost ten or twelve cents a quart. An accurate account is kept of the
feed; the man in charge orders at the feed store anything he desires for
the cow, and it is all down on a “pass-book.” Here are the figures for
one hundred days past:
THE COW’S DEBIT AND CREDIT FOR ONE HUNDRED DAYS.
_Dr._
850 lbs. bale Hay, at $22 per ton $9.35
1,000 lbs. Corn Meal, at $1.35 per 100 lbs 13.50
400 lbs. Bran, at $1.30 per 100 lbs 5.20
200 lbs. Fine Feed, “Shorts,” at $1.55 per 100 lbs 3.10
20 bundles of bedding Straw, at 10c. 2.00
Paid man for care and milking, $1 per week 14.30
------
Total expenses for 100 days $47.45
_Cr._
1,200 Quarts of best milk (12 quarts per day) at 7c. $84.00
------
Money profit in 100 days $36.55
Or, to put it in another way, the six hundred quarts sold actually
brought in forty-two dollars cash, and the entire six hundred quarts
used at home cost five dollars and forty-five cents. The cow cost, say,
sixty-five dollars. The entire care, which was not paid in the surplus
of milk above twelve quarts per day, is charged in the expenses above.
The manure produced, if sold, would more than meet interest on the cost
of cow, and any depreciation in value by increasing age. Allow the above
average to be kept up only two hundred days in a year, and at the end of
that time suppose the cow is sold for half price (thirty-two dollars and
fifty cents), and a fresh one substituted, there would still be a gain
of forty dollars and sixty cents for two hundred days, or for a year a
profit of seventy-four dollars and ten cents.
With good feed the sixty-five dollar cow will keep up a full supply of
milk at least twenty-six weeks, and then be worth forty dollars for
continued milking and breeding. Sell her then and buy another fresh
cow for sixty-five dollars—a loss of fifty dollars a year. The above
liberal allowance of forty-seven dollars and forty-five cents for feed
and care one hundred days, amounts to one hundred and seventy-three
dollars and nineteen cents a year. Adding the loss of fifty dollars for
purchasing two fresh cows, makes the total annual expense two hundred
and twenty-three dollars and nineteen cents. This would make the supply
of milk, twelve quarts a day (four thousand three hundred and eighty
quarts), cost about five cents a quart, or not quite fifty-one cents for
ten quarts. This is not an exaggerated estimate for a sixty-five dollar
cow, renewed every twenty-six weeks. The feed and care may be very much
less than the above forty-seven dollars and forty-five cents per hundred
days, by saving all waste foods suitable for a cow, and by securing
pasturage seven or eight months, and especially when a cow can be cared
for by members of the family, thus saving fifty-two dollars a year.
Taking the country as a whole, probably fifty dollars will ordinarily buy
a cow that will, on fair feed, average ten to twelve quarts per day for
the first six months after calving.
PORTRAITS OF FAMOUS DAIRY COWS.
I.—Jersey Cow “Eurotas,” 2454 (_Frontispiece_), owned by A. B. Darling,
Ramsey’s, N. J. She yielded during one week in June, 1879, twenty-two
pounds six ounces of butter.
II.—Ayrshire cow “Old Creamer” (page 23), owned by S. D. Hungerford,
Adams, N. Y. Weight one thousand and eighty pounds. She has yielded one
hundred and two-third pounds a day for three days, and ninety-four pounds
a day for the month.
III.—Jersey cow “Rosalee,” 1215 (page 34), owned by S. G. Livermore,
Cedar Rapids, Iowa. She has given twenty quarts of milk a day. In ten
days in June, 1874, she made twenty-five pounds three ounces of butter.
IV.—Guernsey cow and heifer (page 51), owned by Mr. Rendle, of Catel
Parish, Island of Guernsey.
V.—Swiss cow “Geneva” (page 67), imported by D. G. Aldrich, of Worcester,
Mass. She gave from November first, 1877, to December thirty-first, 1878,
ten thousand nine hundred and five pounds of milk, which yielded five
hundred and seventy-three pounds of butter.
VI.—Dutch (Holstein) cow “Crown Princess” (page 85), imported by Gerrit
S. Miller, of Peterboro’, N. Y. She has yielded thirty-four quarts of
milk a day, and averaged twenty-three quarts a day for six months.
VII.—Shorthorn dairy cow “Cold Cream 4th” (page 101), owned by H. M.
Queen Victoria. She is kept at the Shaw Farm, Windsor Home Park.
VIII.—Jersey cow “Abbie” (page 123), owned by Mr. Harvey Newton, of
Southville, Mass. She yielded from April, 1876, to March, 1877, ten
thousand seven hundred pounds of milk, from which four hundred and
eighty-six pounds of butter were made.
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